The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Effortless: How To Make It Easier To Do What Matters Most With NYT Best Selling Author Greg McKeown
Episode Date: August 16, 2021#383: On today's episode we are joined for a second time by NYT best selling author Greg McKeown. Greg returns to the the show to discuss his new book Effortless: How To Make It Easier To Do What Matt...ers Most. We dive into how we can make what matters most in our life effortless and how we can define how we prioritize our goals and what steps we need to take now to achieve them. To connect with Greg McKeown click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now. This episode is brought to you by Olive & June The Olive & June Mani system is the secret behind salon-perfect at home, all-in-one, no guessing, no messy nails, no salon price tag. All TSC Him & Her listeners can no get 20% off your first mani system with our code SKINNY. Visit www.oliveandjune.com and use promo code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off your first mani system. This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 25,000 courses. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free. That’s right, Skillshare is offering The Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com/skinny This episode is brought to you by BEV Bev is a female-first canned wine brand that was founded to change not only the way a product is consumed, but the way an industry and culture have operated for generations. Their wines are dry, crisp, and a lil' fizzy, super refreshing and delicious. They have ZERO sugar and only 3 carbs and 100 calories per serving. We've worked out an exclusive deal. Receive 20% off your first purchase plush free shipping on all orders. Go to www.drinkbev.com/skinny or use code SKINNY at checkout to claim this deal. Produced by Dear MediaÂ
Transcript
Discussion (0)
The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
I'm Michelle Kwan.
In 1996, the world was in the midst of a massive cultural movement
that saw women finally taking center stage.
Nowhere was this shift more apparent than at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
This audience was the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life.
The noise, everybody's cheering,
and we see all these USA flags.
It was the most important summer in women's sports history.
And team after team after team,
the U.S. women kept winning.
Basketball, soccer, softball, gymnastics.
I just said, give me mine.
Like, give me mine.
Join me for Dear Media's Summer of Gold,
presented by Together.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur.
A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the
ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her.
Aha!
It is an interesting challenge as you become more successful.
The space to think is under attack.
And so it's one of the things people don't fully anticipate with success.
Everyone wants to be successful, but you don't realize that suddenly, yes, it's a nice problem to have too many things
coming at you. Maybe that sounds like, it doesn't make it less of a problem just because it's a nice
problem. Welcome back everybody to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. We have an
incredible episode for you today. Second time on the show, second appearance, Greg McKeown.
For those of you that are not familiar with Greg McKeown, he is an author, New York Times
bestselling author, may I say, public speaker, leadership and business strategist.
And we love having him on the show.
This episode is for anyone who's trying to figure out their life, be more productive,
be more efficient, figure out the right way to do things.
And Michael is such a fan of his book that I want to put you on the spot right now and ask you what are some tips that you've learned from two of his
books? I know you look to his work all the time when it comes to your own business. Like I said,
this is his second appearance on the show. The first one was in September of 2019, I believe it
was episode 217, How to Master Essentialism. And I highly recommend that either you go back and
listen. It doesn't matter which order you listen to these, you can go listen to this one
first, that one first, whatever. But I recommend listening to both and definitely checking out his
book essentialism. It's one of the best productivity books that I've ever read. It really helps you
get through the noise, chop through all the stuff that's not essential and actually focus on what
is essential. So think of it as a productivity book, but on steroids to help you really refine and define what are the essential items in your life. Is your wife essential? Of
course, my wife's essential. Of course. How essential on your list? I mean, you're like
number six. I'm just kidding. Number six. Number one. Number one, Lauren. That's a good answer.
Number one. Anyways, enough about us. This is about Greg and his new book. He's got a new book
called Effortless, Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. It's an instant New York Times bestseller. This conversation, again, goes all over the place, but it's really
about productivity, how to be efficient, how to define what's important, how to really channel
what you should be working on in your life and how to cut out some of the noise. With that,
Greg McKeown, welcome back for the second time to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show.
This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her.
So we were talking earlier off air about how when you write a second book,
we both believe, I think, that it should be better than the first one, which is hard to top your
first one, essentialism. That is such an incredible tool, but I feel like you did.
Oh, well, that's a very nice way to begin the conversation. What I was saying, and I still
reiterate, is that my mantra was just don't write a rubbish book. Just like don't do the stuff that
makes it hard to read. Don't do the stuff that actually a lot of authors fall into,
which is they write a book too long. They didn't really understand. They
didn't have enough time to get it right the second time. They've been spending years preparing for
the first one. And then there's a rush to do the second one. And so my whole thing was like,
just don't do that. It reminds me, I just had Matthew McConaughey on the What's Essential
podcast. And he was talking about this with his Hollywood career,
that he wasn't sure how to be exceptionally successful, but he definitely wanted to avoid
the big mistakes that he saw other actors make. Such as?
Well, first of all, I mean, he was getting pigeonholed in rom-com type shows. And so
instead of just carrying that journey down as a sort of race to the bottom,
he took off for a year or two. He just said, look, I don't know what I want, but I do know
what I don't want. I don't want to just become irrelevant because I've followed this one path
of success to failure. And so just even having that, I think is quite a good recipe for success,
is just don't do the stuff that's really going to mess you up so that you can be consistent over
time. It doesn't sound exciting. It doesn't sound like how to become very successful. Just be
consistent and don't be rubbish. But actually, I think it is. No, I think it is too. And we were
just talking a little bit off air. So many people like that.
And I don't think it's bad to have goals. Like you're moonshine. Like I want to be the greatest
at whatever you're doing. But I think the reverse of that is just saying like, I don't want to drop
below the bar that I've already set. You'd want to get incrementally better each day,
or at least like hold yourself to a certain standard that you've already achieved, right?
Like people don't talk about that. But again, like if you're compounding the interest, just like you would investing, like that shit
adds up. Well, podcasting comes to mind. Someone was just sharing this with me. They've done 400
podcasts like you both have. And he said that he'd read that 90% of people that start a podcast
quit by the third podcast. And of the 10% remaining, another 90% quit by the third podcast and of the 10 remaining another 90 percent quit by episode 21
so it's and the rest quit by episode 100 i'll give you another step it reminds me of that graphic of
success of the guy that's chipping away he's chipping away chipping away at the mountain
and right before he's about to get the diamond he turns around i'll give you like another step
because i get a kind of like i guess now I get a unique perspective running Dear Media
is I get to see like new podcasts, existing podcasts,
aspiring podcasts come through this door.
And the first thing I always tell people is
if you're doing this to make money right away.
Don't.
Don't.
And I probably don't want to work with you.
But second, you need to do this for a full year consistently every week. Because
from what I've seen and what the data that like, you know, we get so much data here now because
we have a hundred shows or so. And you get a, I get to see like what happens when people kind
of quit at that year mark, or I'll get the message where I'll be like, Hey, I'm actually
going to switch to seasonal or take a hiatus. I'm like, Nope, you're right at the tipping point.
And you're quitting right before, because you haven't got that instant gratification. And if you think about it as a writer or an entertainer, a year to achieve
greatness and make a living is really not that long. It's just we've gotten used to this thing
where it's like it needs to be right away. But if I told you, Greg, you're starting out as a writer
and you only need to spend one year and after you, you might be... I guarantee you your success
horizon was much further than a year out, right? Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, as of now, it's a 20-year journey in writing. And I still
feel like I'm, definitely feel like I'm learning. I definitely feel like I want to improve my trade,
understand the process better. I mean, all of that's true. So it's definitely a long-term
pursuit. With the podcast, when the What's Essential podcast,
just before it hit the year mark, that's when it became top five on self-improvement on iTunes.
That's when it was in top number six or seven on education.
You start getting that exponential growth, right? People start to see it. It takes that time.
I think it does. I think you're trying to learn. And so if you put these two together,
so even though I had the mantra, don't be rubbish, actually in the book, I have a principle, which is have the courage to be rubbish. But these aren't contradictory. The whole idea is
have the courage to be rubbish when you start. Just begin. Don't try to expect perfection and
have all the results right now. Be willing to begin,
have what I call zero drafts. Like in writing, you write a zero draft, it's so bad,
no one will ever see it but you, but you began. And then have a journey where you say, look,
I'm in this for the long run. And if I can stay in the long run, you can get better and better,
and you can build a reputation. And you can then, at some point, there's a tipping point. That's when all the media pays attention.
So then they tell the wrong story because everybody else suddenly, oh, overnight success.
I remember interviewing one, I'm trying to catch his name again. He was the marketing
genius behind the seven habits of highly effective people. And he said to me, this was 20 years ago,
he said it. He said, we worked night and day for three years to make the seven habits an
overnight success. No one paid attention for the three years. It gets to a tipping point and
everyone says, oh, phenomenon, overnight, unbelievable. Yeah, that's what it takes.
And you know what they were doing? It's interesting because it parallels with podcasting too,
and of course, directly with books.
But he said that he had Steven
on every small magazine interview.
All these tiny-
Previous to when it was the overnight success,
during that three years, okay.
All throughout three years.
He was just every day being interviewed
by tiny magazines that no one had ever heard of, but that small community had. And eventually it felt to people,
oh, I'm hearing about this everywhere. Everywhere I read in a magazine, I've seen an interview,
I hear about it. It's become part of eventually a part of Americana. So there's a lot to be said.
There's an enormous value in being able to go small, but be consistent if you want to have breakthrough success.
The problem is that people see the big stuff and they think that's where they need to start.
You see it all the time in companies that are marketing a new product, right? They got to be
in every commercial and every interview and every this and that. And they spend all this money,
but they haven't done the little things yet. They haven't reached those tiny communities
that are going to be their champions, right? That's not the stuff that's fancy, right? That's
not the stuff that gets what they think is don't, that's not the stuff that's fancy, right? That's not the stuff that gets it like what they think is attention,
but that's really the stuff that helps build brand or marketing or book or whatever.
Selfishly, I, in my career, I've blogged for 12 years and I said yes to everything,
like what you're referring to, every tiny little magazine feature, a sixth grade project of someone
who wanted to interview me. I said,
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I got to a point, which is why your first book was so helpful
for me, where it was like, I can't continue to say yes. I actually have to say no. For sure.
And something shifted. And I started really, really practicing essentialism. Do you think
when you're starting out your career, like say someone's starting out their career and they're listening, that they should practice essentialism or do you think they should say yes to everything?
Let's clarify.
So essentialism can be applied at any level of success, but you apply it differently.
Would love to hear more about that.
Well, so the first practice of essentialism is to explore.
So you're trying things.
You're trying many, many things.
Then you have the courage to eliminate the things that aren't working.
And then you build systems to make execution as easy as possible.
So those are the three steps of essentialism.
Explore, eliminate, and execute.
In the earliest in someone's career, I would advocate, try lots of things.
Go really broad. Try and explore, but don't commit to everything for a long time. You try it, you test it, you put it aside,
looking for the things that really speak to you. And then all through your career,
it's that same cycle. It's that ongoing cycle. So even at first, I'm willing to write anything just about in any publication.
I go back 20 years.
I'm just yes to anything because you get some experience and you get going.
And I'm not good at what I'm doing, but you get a foot in the door and you build up.
As you continue in your success, you have to become more selective.
Otherwise, you'll plateau simply because in exactly the way that
you were just describing, that you have so many things on your calendar, so many things on your
plate, it consumes you and your ability to even dream of what the next level is weakened because
you don't have time to even think, even dream, even imagine. And so it's the ongoing disciplined pursuit of what's essential.
And that cycle is the important missing part of the story.
What's also essential too, and I'm sure you agree with this as a writer, is creative time
and thinking time. I think sometimes we get on this roller coaster where for me, my team will
text me like so many text
messages in the morning and there's so many emails and it's like, it's so easy to get on that
roller coaster. You almost have to say, no, you guys, this is blocked out. For me, it's my foot
spa. I have a hole in the wall foot spa where I go and be creative, where you like block out the
time on your calendar and say no. Yes. I think that the key is, I mean, this is
interesting. So I was under contract to write Effortless and no particular urgency on deadline,
but I was working on it pretty steadily, but not making very much progress with it until the
pandemic. And every day that I worked on the book in the pandemic, I just laughed at myself.
I was like, what was your plan, Greg?
Like, where were you going to find
this amount of uninterrupted space
in the life that you had designed
in the travel that was particularly travel?
And so it is an interesting challenge
as you become more successful,
the space to think is under attack. And so it's one of the things people
don't fully anticipate with success. Everyone wants to be successful, but you don't realize
that suddenly, yes, it's a nice problem to have too many things coming at you. Maybe that sounds
like, it doesn't make it less of a problem just because it's a nice problem. No, it's been,
say you're somebody that's scaling a business. So in the beginning,
when you're starting that business, you're putting a ton of thought into the strategy and execution of beginning that business, right? And then let's say you get to the stage where the
business starts to scale and you have more people and you have more things, you have more inbound.
What you don't realize is that your calendar gets inundated with all of these kind of like
tasks or follow-ups or to-dos
that you have to do to keep scaling the business. But you forget that what made the business get to
that point is all the strategy and planning that took place in the beginning. And so like in my
own life, I've had to actually step back and be like, okay, I actually need to restructure either
the way the management team is set up or production team, whatever, so that I can get back some of
that time. Because I'm like, for me, I'm not doing a service to anyone if we're not actually strategizing and thinking
and planning. You're just kind of doing, doing, doing. And that's great to a degree.
But if there's not thought behind all that action, you end up getting off the rails, right?
So if you've been listening to this show for a long time, or even just jumping in recently,
one of the themes of the show, if not the main theme, is to constantly look at ways we can better
ourselves, which is why we've been partnered with one of our favorite platforms for so long. And
that platform is Skillshare. For those of you that do not know what Skillshare is, Skillshare is an
online learning community that offers membership with meeting with so much to explore, real projects to create in the support of fellow
creators. Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. If you are listening to this podcast
and you have not checked out Skillshare, you are missing out. I just recently had my entire team
do the productivity masterclass and it's called principles and tools to boost your productivity.
And I'm telling you, they got so much out of it. It's helped so much with little productive tips and tricks and tactics
to help you be more effective. Looking back, I feel like I would get more out of Skillshare
than I did in college. And I know that's weird to say, but I think that I would have been able
to really refine my skills on Skillshare and do what I really love. So if you're out there and
you have a job that you don't like, I would recommend refining your skills on Skillshare.
It's an online learning community that offers membership with meaning. With so much to explore,
real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives, Skillshare empowers you to
accomplish real growth. There is all kinds of classes. And while I have Michael here,
you guys know he's huge, huge, huge on Skillshare. Can you tell us what your favorite favorite is? Well, my favorite one for people to start with is by one of
our friends, Greg McKeown, who actually just came on the show for the second time and who's been on
before he wrote the book Essentialism. And he has a course called Simple Productivity,
How to Accomplish More with Less. We all want to be more productive. This is a great one to
jump into on Skillshare. Greg does an amazing job going through it. So that's what I would start
with. Get an annual subscription. It's less than $10 a month. I'm a huge fan of being stimulated
mentally and you can do that with Skillshare. It's so affordable. I'm telling you, check it out.
Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash TSC. You get a one month free trial of premium
membership. That's one month of a premium membership at Skillshare.com slash TSC. Slide into my DMs and let me know what you think.
A friend of mine put it this way. They said, oh, Greg, I'm just too busy living to think about
life. What? Yeah. And I thought it was just a great one-liner for the ages of what not to do.
And it's the same, of course, as an entrepreneur. It's like, I'm too busy running my business to
think about my business. And so that balance, that dynamic equilibrium is so important,
is that you create space. You actually have to create space in order to think. It doesn't
happen anymore. And it's not just for an entrepreneur who becomes successful. It's
almost universally true now because all of us, even if we don't feel it, are living in a time
of such unbelievable success. So this is true for almost everybody listening to this, that they have
more options, more things they could do than they could possibly
have time for. Anyone who has a smartphone, anyone who's listening to this, they're literate.
We live in an age, in a period of the earth that's so successful compared to any period before.
And so it means that we all are overwhelmed with too many possibilities. We're all distracted. We all struggle to have space to think. And we don't make it easy on ourselves because we, you know, I was working with a Steve Harvey show and worked with one of the people from his audience.
And I went to a home and we're doing this whole shoot and we go to a bedroom and I'm like, okay, where do you put your phone? And she said, well, actually, I keep it under my pillow.
Oof, oof. Yikes. to her bedroom and I'm like, okay, where do you put your phone? And she said, well, actually I keep it under my pillow. So she would wake up in the middle of the night if someone texted or emailed her, respond and go back to bed. Right. Now the thing is, and now both of you responded
just exactly like everybody responds when I share that story, which is that it's not wrong,
but it's like, it's a, I shouldn't say this. It's wrong. It's just like, that stresses me
the fuck out hearing that. But what it is too, no, no, I don't mean you too, but like, it's a, I shouldn't say this. It's wrong. It's just like, that stresses me the fuck out hearing that.
But what it is too, and I don't mean YouTube,
but like, I worry that some of us
are a little self-righteous about it
because where do we keep our phones?
You know, like for a lot of people, they keep it.
Oh no, no, I'm fully healthy.
It's a full 10 inches from my head.
That's true.
Yeah, let's get off our high horse.
So all I'm saying is that for a lot of people,
it's the last thing they do at night.
It's the first thing they do in the morning. Any moment they used to be bored when they had to
think they're at an airport, the plane's late, they get a moment to think. No one gets to think.
No one thinks. They just are suddenly on Instagram. I want to stay on this one second though,
because about being self-righteous, because some of the flack sometimes that we get when we're on
this topic about taking time to think and being essential and not responding to email, putting
your phone, some of the response is like, hey, I have a job. I need to be available. I need,
and I get that. I empathize. What I want to clarify to people is there was a period of time,
both in Lauren and I's career, where we're the same thing. I had to be available. I had to be
on call. I had to answer. Like I remember in my first business, we used to get calls from like
India and I was the only person to answer because we worked with
different time zones. And I was the only person that could answer the phone and it would ring my
phone to be right next to my head on loud. And I would jump up and like smash against the wall
because I'd be so delirious. And I'd be like, Jetbed, this is Michael. Hello. And I would act
like I was awake in this call. So like I get that period. But the point is, is like, if you're
thoughtful and you do the things
in the beginning, in the start of your career, then you work towards having a little bit more
autonomy, and then it's time to think. But in the beginning, and why I love your book,
essentialism so much, people should go back and listen the first time I didn't mention that you
were here, this is the second time, is that you can apply essentialism throughout your career.
And I think highlighting that is important. And the idea is
that you're constantly progressing and moving up the chain and doing what's essential so that you
can continue to progress, right? It's not so that, for me, and tell me if I'm wrong, essentialism is
not so that you can stay in the same place always, right? It's so that you continue to do what's
essential so that you continue to move up the chain or progress or be more successful or whatever.
Whatever level of success a person is at right now, they will tend to plateau at that level
unless they become a little more selective. Yes.
And you don't want to become too selective too fast either. There's a dance and some
self-awareness and some wisdom in this. And we're not saying like turn off your
phone and don't respond to your boss. Right. So, exactly. You could take this to an extreme that would be unhelpful.
But what you want to do is keep on adjusting and saying, okay, do I have enough space to be able
to think about what to do next? Do I have enough space to identify today what really matters most?
What's essential? And if you don't, well, that's fine. But I'll tell you what's going to happen
predictably is you're going to plateau. Yes. That's fine. But I'll tell you what's going to happen predictably is
you're going to plateau. Yes. That's what I want to do too. That's exactly what I was hoping to
hear. Because what I think we try to get out is like, I empathize with every stage of every
individual's career, but I want people to keep moving forward in their career. And to do that,
to your point, you have to start being selective at some point or else you just end up doing the
same thing. And that's how, no offense to anybody listening, you end up in that dead end job for 30 years, hating what you do, not enjoying life because you're doing the same thing over and over and over again. wrote, essentialism really found it impactful. I wish I'd read this book 50 years ago.
And I found that heartbreaking in a way to hear that because you don't get the 50 years back.
But I think that similarly, I want to introduce the ideas that I'm writing about at the youngest possible age. I mean, with my own children, I've been introducing it very, very young.
And it means that they have had, you know,
well, when I travel, 80% of the time I travel, I'll bring one of my children with me. So they
get to hear these ideas again and again and participate in them. And it's allowed them,
I think, to feel empowered. I was trying to persuade my daughter to read a book one day,
and she reads endlessly. So it's not like she's not interested in that, but she was pushing back.
And then I went back to my office and she slipped a note under my door and the note that she had written, she said, I've already expressed my unwillingness to read this book, but I would
like to make a counteroffer. I can't read it all in one day today, but perhaps I could read it over
a period of time. It would be okay to read it over a period of time or instead of another piece of
work. I'm sure that can be made possible. How old is she and does she need a job? Yeah, she was 14 at the time she wrote
that. And I loved it. I mean, I rejoice in that moment because that's an essentialist. It's someone
who recognizes that every choice is a trade-off. Every time you say yes, you're saying no to
something. And I was like, let's say, typical manager in this moment.
I've got this shiny new object.
Hey, here's this book.
This will be good for you.
I'm not wrong, but I'm not aware of what she's already doing and what the trade-off is.
And so what I would say to people is really there's three levels.
One, take responsibility, just like Eve did in this story, for prioritizing your own day.
You at least need to take responsibility for that. Answer the question every day,
what is my priority today? Of course, you'll do more than one thing, but if you don't know
what your priority is, then you will not get that done in most instances. Other things will come in.
If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will. Number two is that you need to advocate for that.
So you initiate the conversation.
Again, same with Eve.
She was using language that was perfectly polite and reasonable to point out to me,
if I say yes to this, I'm saying no to that.
That makes me responsible.
Suddenly I think, well, do I really want her to do this instead of this homework that she's
already been thoughtful about?
No, I don't.
I'll step away from this. The third thing is as leaders, if we have any influence
with someone else, we need to make it safe for people to have a prioritization conversation.
So we can say to someone, for example, I didn't with Eve, but it would have been better if I had.
By me asking you to do this, what are you saying no to? So that you can actually have a dialogue about it.
One of the strangest things, I mean, I'm 10 years on from when I first was teaching about
essentialism professionally. It's occurred to me the most obvious thing in the whole world,
which is that nobody inside of corporations are having prioritization conversations.
It's actually so obvious, it's breathtakingly bad that it's taken me this
long to really understand this. He should talk to your team at Dear Media.
I'd be happy to have you come talk to Dear Media.
That's really, really smart advice.
That'd be fun. We should do it.
That people in the organizations aren't having the conversation of what's important.
They really, it's seriously not happening. And that's the news. It's not like, well, 10% of the days people talk
about it. No. If they talk about it at all, and even this is not that common, but it might be
in an annual offsite where someone says, okay, well, here's the strategy. Here are the big yeses
and here's what we're not going to do. Maybe. Maybe they do it quarterly. If they're really,
really on it about it, maybe that's happening. But the day-to-day
where the real prioritization takes place, because it's the day-to-day trade-offs where
your actual strategy is being formulated, not your stated strategy, it doesn't happen at all.
Think of how odd that is. What a curious case of the non-existent prioritization conversations.
I think managers, upper management, executives, everyone gets stuck in the day-to-day,
myself included sometimes, right? I think that happens to all of us because we get so inundated
with like, here's my inbox, here's my normal workflow, here's what I'm doing. And again,
getting back to actually thinking and prioritizing and strategizing. You do all of these things
whenever you're starting something new, right? You start a book, you're like, okay, this is
what it is, but then you start getting into it. Maybe it's different with a book because you
have the outline, but you get what I'm saying. You just kind of get into this
flow of this is how I do things every day.
Best canned wine on the planet by far is Bev. I am a huge fan. Okay. First of all,
the can is so, so cute. It's like the cutest can I've ever seen.
And what I like about Bev is it's female owned. We had the owner Alex on the podcast.
And it's founded to change not only the way a product is consumed, but the way an industry
and culture have been operated for generations. And I think they disrupted a category, which is
super cool. The industry is super masculine and they are breaking
norms because their cans are like a beautiful sparkly red. They have a pastel blue. They have
a yellow and they're also so delicious. So normally canned wine is super sweet. And so I've avoided it,
but their wines are dry. They're crisp. They're a little fizzy, which I love and super refreshing.
They kind of have like a bite for a night out. I like to put my cans in my purse with some pixie straws. You should know they have four varietals, rosé,
sauv blanc, pinot gris, and pinot noir. I am a fan of the rosé. My second favorite is definitely
the pinot gris. They also have, and this is so important to me, zero sugar and only three carbs
and 100 calories per serving. And it's a boozy drink, okay? Each
can is a glass and a half of wine. Perfect when you don't want to open a bottle of wine. You know
how you open a bottle of wine and it lasts for like a week? That's why I like the canned wine.
It's efficient. It's cute. A 24-pack is equal to eight bottles of wine. This is the cutest
housewarming gift on the planet. You just bring a box. You put a big bow on it. You can bring it
to dinners,
bachelorette parties, bridal showers, whatever. And of course, we've worked out an exclusive deal
for all skinny confidential him and her listeners. You're going to receive 20% off your first
purchase plus free shipping on all orders. I personally suggest trying the best selling
ladies night variety pack so you can taste all of their delicious varietals and see what works
for you. Okay, everyone immediately go to drinkbath.com slash skinny to use our code skinny at checkout
to claim this deal. That's d-r-i-n-k-b-e-v.com slash skinny. Cheers.
I became really aware of the non-existence of these conversations when I learned from Ben Benitez. He is a CEO of Uncharted. He read Essentialism actually years ago, but then separately, it'd come together, they did like four meetings, like a book club as an executive team.
They'd read a quarter of the book.
There's four parts in the book.
Read a quarter, come back and talk about it.
He said one day one of the executives came in and he's like, I want to throw this book across the room, which I love that part of his experience because I'm like, yeah, they got it.
You're having to face the
reality of trade-offs. And what you normally do in life is just pretend there are none,
and you just try and do it all. Well, what happened is that as they introduced this language,
it started to dawn on them that if essentialism is true, they should be able to do
the same or maybe even more, but the same in less time.
They said, okay, we're going to have an experiment, a four-day work week.
And they brought in someone from outside who gathered data for them about what their output
was. They had six weeks of trying to do a four-day work week, got the data again,
then another six weeks. So it's a three-month experiment. At the end of it, they concluded categorically with the data that they were now
producing in 32 hours what they used to produce in 40 hours. What was the price? So they've moved
officially in a four-day workweek company. What was the price? The price was what we're talking
about, was actually each person getting clear what was essential themselves,
taking the time to do that, then having the conversation. So even as the CEO, he makes it
safe now. He'll go to someone and if he's assigning something, he'll say, okay, here's what I think
you need to do today. This is the new opportunity, or there's a problem that we've got with a client.
Here's the thing, but what are you working on? What's your priority right now? He said about 40% of the time,
they'll conclude, yeah, that what he is bringing to them is more important. Circumstances have
changed. This is the thing that should be done. But 60% of the time, he walks away going, no,
what you're doing is better. It's more important. You carry on with it. That's the missing
conversation. I think that's an extremely important conversation, not just in business,
but in your personal life as well and with your partner, right? I think that's an extremely important conversation, not just in business, but in your personal life as well. And with your partner, right? Like, I think that you
can get in the same thing with parents and kids and family and all sorts. Like we had a, we had
a completely failed week when I'm going to tell this story, you might not like it, but a completely
failed. We were not doing, we were not practicing essentialism about three or four weeks ago.
We had to fly into town from Texas. We landed in san diego went to weddings and dinners and baby
showers and we drove up to la and keep in mind this with a baby yeah work and podcasts and dinner
meetings and social dinners and this and then went back and did like another wedding thing i came home
on that sunday no this it took us two weeks to recover i couldn't even move i couldn't even text
my dad a legitimate text on Father's Day.
You were burned out.
I was done.
We were trying to blend all the personal stuff with all the business stuff,
with all the fun stuff and do it all and cram everybody in.
And it left us feeling completely exhausted.
It left family and friends feeling like, hey,
did they just like pencil us into their busy schedule?
It left our business partners being like, same feeling.
And what I realized, I was like, to your point, whatever you say yes to, you're saying no to something else. What do you
say no to? There's trade-offs. And we tried to do it all. And I told Lauren after that, I'm like,
we are not doing that again. We're going to disappoint some people. But at the end of the day,
we performed at a four across all of these things because we were just too spread thin.
I would love, this is off a little tangent, more about your thinking time in your calendar.
I know if I see Michael thinking or sitting or twiddling his thumbs, I immediately take
it as an opportunity to be like, why aren't you giving me attention?
Anytime Michael's thinking, I'm like, what are you doing?
You know, I'm like with fucking binoculars hanging off the ceiling,
like with a magnifying glass.
But I would love to know how you structure your day
and if thinking time and creative time and writing time is on every day.
Like what does Monday through Friday look like for you?
Yeah, I wish my wife Anna were here right now
because it would keep me honest and it would be entertaining too.
I mean, there's all sorts of things.
I mean, we've got a lot wrong in our
journey, but some of the things that we found helpful, one came out of necessity and it was
to create a done for the day list. So that instead of making a to-do list, which most overachievers
do, that gets longer by the end of the day than it is at the beginning. And that becomes your decision-making
tool so that you basically get to the end of every day. You haven't stopped, but you still feel
unsatisfied because look at all I didn't get done. Well, this is like a, this is, this is how
shall I say, a loser's game because it will extrapolate that forward for a year, for two
years, 10 years, you're going to
be more and more overwhelmed and more and more frustrated, even though you've actually achieving
more and more. So you're not going to win well at this game. The done for the day list says,
okay, when you're doing your planning each day, which again, lots of people are just not doing
that. But if you do it, one of the little patterns I like is just a list of six, three personal things, three business things.
Each of them, they're important.
They don't have to be big, but they're important.
And if I get those things done, then I can be satisfied with the day.
Then you can be done and the idea of having both a done for the day list or then what has been helpful to me
especially through covert a done for the time done for the day time i chose five o'clock which might
be early for some people for me with four children with wife it felt like if i went later getting
dinner sorted and getting people there i'm more more tired. Everyone gets grumpier.
You know, your last act of the day, the third of the day starts to be not great. So my accountability
was I would walk out of the office and like literally, it's five o'clock, you know, like a
town crier. It's 5.02, whatever time it was, to give me an excuse to actually be done at a set time. A lot of people in the pandemic,
it's a Zoom, eat, sleep, repeat world
where it's six, seven, eight, nine, 10 o'clock at night.
It keeps just going.
There's no natural end.
There's no boundary.
And you can't even tell what day it is.
And it's definitely changed that Saturdays and Sundays
are now just people still email
and they still expect responses in a way that pre-pandemic, I think people still saw a distinction. And so we're just living now in this
completely boundary-less world. And it's not great for high performance. It's not great for satisfied
life. It's not great for great relationships. It's like counter all of those things because
we're rhythmic beings. So having boundaries, and I've got for two, a done for the day list is a boundary. A time to be done is a boundary. And now also Anna and I
will use language, which will say, okay, are you doing sneaky work? You know, no sneaky work.
Meaning like you're working when you're supposed to be done.
Yeah. When we say, when we go, we go sit in the...
I'm doing a lot of sneaky work, Greg. I've got to be, I'm getting the death stare. I'm doing a
lot of sneaky work. You are getting the death stare. I saw stare i'm doing a lot of sneaky work you are getting the death stare i saw that i want to know how how you use so
anyways on to the next no i want to know how you use essentialism and effortless in your personal
relationship with your wife well let's talk about it please please please no no no no he just tried
to change the subject again no i want to know how you use it in your relationships i'm sure other
people want to know your personal marriage yes again. Again, we need Anna. She can keep the honest, but things
that we do. Okay. So today we went on a walk together. There were times we were doing that
almost literally every day through the pandemic. This week we've done quite a lot. I think almost
every day we've gone, we've only done about a half hour walk together, but that is really valuable time.
It was a little tricky at first. We weren't sure what to talk about exactly. We had loads to talk
about, but some days didn't go super well, right? I mean, marriage is always a highly vulnerable
emotional experience because any small thing can set off unresolved issues from the past.
It's a bit of a landmine type experience, but we stayed with it and it helped us to get more in sync
through just literally walking together.
You're actually in sync physically.
Have you seen that movie 1917?
Where they're running through like World War I, the field.
That's how I feel in a conversation with Lauren.
I'm like, all right, be careful where I step here.
No, because we go on a walk every single day. We we'll go on a walk just like you guys landmines this
motherfucker will bring up work and i'm like can we just enjoy the birds and the trees and the
smooth jazz that i've put on my spotify playlist let's be let's be self-aware here we both do this
at different times and i think that's the difficulty in a relationship is especially when
you're in like in a especially when you're in a marriage
because you're talking,
in a marriage,
you're talking about everything.
Like, you know,
you're talking about work,
you're talking about the kids,
you're talking about personal stuff,
you're talking about intimacy,
you're talking about everything.
Everything.
And the question is like,
with boundaries again,
when are we all aligned
that we're talking about
this subject and when?
Like, because Lauren,
sometimes Lauren will talk
about business
and I'll be like,
I don't want to talk business
or sometimes I will
or sometimes I'm going to talk
about the kid,
I don't want to talk about the kid.
Like, it's this back and forth we're going to vegas tomorrow and if you bring up business i'm just warning you in front of everyone on the mic if you bring up business
we're doing a i'm gonna lay in the street we're doing a little mom dad get away from the kid
you're gonna lay in the street i'm gonna lay in the street if he that's gonna be my top essential
thing to do if he brings up business would you literally lay in the street i will do anything
for shock value for him lauren that sounds like it would be harder for you right
one time one time he pissed me off and i considered taking his hairbrush that he's obsessed with
laying it in the street getting all the little pieces and sprinkling it on his pillow don't you
fucking dare you get that divorce paper faster than you okay but listen i want so obviously
second time i think everybody should go back to the
first time he came on as we really dive into your first book, essentialism, which we love.
And we, I told you, we talk about it all the time, which we talk about Skillshare,
hair skills, or here's a free one for you. We talk about Skillshare all the time. And then
your course on there. And I said, it's a great place for people to start, but I do highly
recommend your book. It's been vastly helpful in both Lauren and I's life. The second one,
effortless. I feel like I need to figure
this one out. Let's talk about it. And let's talk about the distinction between the two.
It doesn't matter where you start. Does it matter? Do you prefer people start with essentialism or
you can jump into either one? The Olive and June Manny system saved my life recently. I just got
off a huge flight to France,
and I had to go straight to my sister's wedding in San Diego, and my nails were chipped. They
were screwed up, and I needed something fast. So with the Manny System, you get the most beautiful
manicure. I carry this all the time whenever I'm traveling. And what's cool about it is normally,
I can't paint the hand that I don't use. So if I'm trying to paint my right hand with my left hand,
it gets all screwed up. But they have this thing, okay? And this is why everyone needs the Manny
system, and it's the Poppy. Basically, what this is is a patented brush handle that makes it easy
to paint both of your hands. That was a game changer for me. Honestly, it's worth every single dime because I could paint my nails on the
go super quick. Another thing about Olive and June's polish and why I'm a fan is that I want
it to be thick and shiny and not chip. And a lot of regular polish does chip, but their polish does
not. Okay. It lasts so long. Even after my sister's wedding, it looked absolutely amazing. I did it myself. I
felt very good about myself. The Olive and June Mani system is the secret behind perfect salon
nails at home, all in one, no guessing, no messy nails, no salon price tag. And it's so cute. This
little kit is absolutely adorable. I remember before using this kit, I would go on Amazon and
try to make my own kit and get like the clippers
and like the scissors and the file and all that. And it was never cute. But Olive and June's Manny
system is absolutely adorable. You want it on your Instagram feed. And now they're giving you
20% off your first Manny system with our code SKINNY. Your new nail life is here. Get 20%
off your first Manny system when you use promo code SKINNY at oliveandjune.com. We're done with
expensive bad Manny's.
This is the new us, okay?
And if you're looking for a cute gift, this is adorable for bachelorette parties,
bridal showers, even a wedding.
Like, everyone needs a Manny system.
I think most people think that they need to start with essentialism.
And I've had feedback from people that just don't
even know about essentialism, barely. They have only read Effortless and have found value in it.
In some ways, I don't think it matters. I hope that they are, that's a presumptuous example,
I hope it's a bit like the sort of the Paul McCartney and John Lennon thing where, yeah,
they created music separately, but together was when the magic happened, you know, so that that's when the Beatles did their great stuff. I think essentialism and
effortless have a kind of synergistic relationship. And so I think, you know,
start wherever you want with it. In both instances, what the overlap is, is that I'm an
advocate for not just trying to do more and push harder and put in more effort to achieve something. It's in both books, I'm
advocating that you take that effort that you have, that limited valuable asset of effort,
and make sure you get a good return on your effort, a good ROE. And how you use your effort
really matters. It sounds like such an obvious thing. Do you have to really point out
to overachievers that they have to be careful how they use their effort? Yes, that's what I found.
Because a lot of insecure overachievers try to solve every problem by putting in more effort.
Now, it's a perfectly sensible strategy, especially if you're not putting in any effort
to put in more effort. With my children, I am teaching them the value of effort. Take initiative, do something. You can make incredible
things happen by putting in effort. Fine. The book isn't to people who aren't putting in effort.
The book is written to people who are highly engaged, putting in effort, but they're running
out of space. So that group of people, they want 10x results. The people listening to this, they want 10x point. You'll get worse results. You want to instead say,
let's not work harder to get better results. Let's find a more effortless way to achieve
better results. Yeah. I work with a lot of different people and I always, I say it in not
nearly as eloquent or professional way as you, but I was like, I always say working hard for
the B's, right? Like it's every, like B bees work hard, right? Everyone can work hard like that. I think that's the first barrier to
entries. Like that's the given, like you're going to work hard, right? You have to put out to your
point, the effort to get the results you want. And if you're somebody who's like, Hey, I don't
want to put the effort, then I think we can all say you're not going to get results, right? You
have to do that. But this whole concept of like working smarter, not harder is a real thing,
right? Like you got to, you have to make sure that that effort is getting you the results you want, because just working hard on something
doesn't necessarily guarantee or mean that you're going to find the success you're looking for,
right? And it's like, I think we can all think of people in our life that just bust their fucking
ass every day. And they're just like, go, go, go, but they never quite make it to that point
they're trying to get to. And it's probably because they're not strategizing. They're not thinking, they're not taking that effort and saying,
is it extrapolating the rewards that I'm actually looking for? And I think we've been,
especially with the hustle culture, we've all been like hustle, hustle, hustle. And there's
a lot of these characters that are running around saying hustle, hustle, hustle. They
need to caveat that with, hey, you got to do the smart thing too, right?
What do you think out of your book are three little tiny tips that you can
leave our audience with that maybe we'll want them to read more? I think if there were three things,
I would say number one is to declutter your mind. Our minds are just full of all sorts of
unhelpful stuff. I'll give a specific example of something to declutter. And that is a belief,
an assumption. And this is the assumption and a lot of overachievers hold it without knowing
they hold it. And it's this, it's what they believe is that easy equals lazy. And it doesn't,
like you can just look up in a dictionary, lazy is not willing to put in the effort. Easy is that
something doesn't require great effort to achieve it. And so as soon as you break that idea apart,
as soon as you invert it and say, well, no, easy does not equal lazy. Easy is just better and
smarter. You can open up a tremendous set of possibilities for entrepreneurs or for people
just trying to get better results. You start to go, well, it doesn't have to be, not everything
has to be so hard all the time. I can look for
an easier path. And in fact, that is a concrete question people can ask is just how can this
thing be effortless? Just that. It sounds so simple. It maybe sounds too simple, too easy.
But that is a game-changing question. I was coaching somebody who's the kind of person
who's up till 4 a.m. in the morning photoshopping for the youth activity the next day at church. Like, no one's expecting that
of her but herself. She is putting this pressure on because she wants better results, and she
assumes that's the way to achieve it. I said to her, look, next time you take on a project,
ask the question, how can this be effortless? Well, she works at a university. The professor
calls her up just the next day. Hey, I need you to video my class. Now, that's all he asked for.
And she just jumped into this overachiever, overcomplicating, overengineering mindset.
So she's thinking, well, we're going to have multiple camera angles.
Then we'll edit them all together. I'll get a whole videography team involved. We'll have intros, outros, music, graphics, slides. I'm going to wow him. And he didn't
ask for any of that, but she's adding all of this stuff, going a second, third mile when he didn't.
Well, she's been coached now. So she remembers, okay, I'm going to,
how can I make this effortless? So she asks a few questions and it turns out that this is
really for one student who's going to miss
the class a few of the classes for an athletic commitment oh this guy was about to get like a
whole cinema production get a cinema production all the solution they came up with on the phone
another student in class would just record it on their iphone and send it to the student that's
missing it whenever he misses that's it that's the solution the professor hadn't thought about
that he was over complicating it too he's the solution. The professor hadn't thought about that. He was overcomplicating it too. He's delighted with that solution. Oh yeah, that's obvious. Let's do that.
She hangs up. It's been a 10 minute phone call. She saved four months of her own time and an entire
team's worth of effort. That's the power of inverting. So that's one practical thing people
can do. Literally, of the next task you are going to take on, ask, how can it be effortless?
And watch it happen.
You can start with small things. I was looking around my office the other day and I'm like,
there's a printer on the floor. It's been there two weeks, right? Like we've got a new printer.
This printer still works. What do I do with it? So every time I look at it, I go, well,
do I give it away? Do I sell it? Do I throw it away? If I throw it away, do I have to find a
recycle center? And that's enough cognitive work
that I'm like, ah, forget it.
I move on to something else.
That's how it's there two weeks.
Well, I could stay two months, two years, right?
Like I haven't solved it.
And then I say, okay, how can it be effortless?
I look up and there's like some workers down the road
and I'm like, oh, maybe they would, maybe they want it.
So I go out and ask them, I got this printed.
Do you want it?
Yes.
Give it to him.
Within two minutes of asking the question,
the problem solved.
And it's done. It is off and it's over and it's like seriously there is so much like this we're just pre-programmed to a sort of a sort of yeah if it's not if it's not hard it can't be
the right path maybe you can apply the printer theory to your entire man cave because there's
so much on the floor speaking of man cave and speaking
of effortless one thing sure though i told i have to kill taylor if he ever um leaves as a producer
he's got too many too many yeah he's got too much information he's seen he's seen lauren and i lose
our shit on each other too many times on this show yeah but specifically you need a good nda here
yeah when we do the intros outros and the pickups pickups being the advertising for the show so we typically don't do those in studio you know we jump in with you right away we do the intros, outros, and the pickups, pickups being the advertising for the show.
So we typically don't do those in studio.
We jump in with you right away.
We do that later.
And we batch a lot of our stuff because we have other stuff going on.
So we try to get into a studio
and do all that stuff in a window of time
where it's like, I can do the interview,
but later we can do,
it's just switching the mind.
We used to get in so many fights back and forth
with when we're doing the ads,
how we're setting up the equipment,
what we have to do in the house. So recently in the man cave, I just set up these mics. They're there permanently.
I hit record. We have not been in one fight since. All this stuff is turned in way in advance. We're
way more productive. But just to point out this effortless solution that actually extrapolates
into a better life, we're fighting less. We're more productive. We have this stuff done. It's
less stress. I'll pick something else to fight about. That translates into so many other areas of our
life. It does. Oh my God, I got rid of all of this weight that was causing conflict with my wife and
actually made our business better and got us way more time back. And it was just a simple thing of
just like setting up this thing and making it effortless. I agree with this next question so
much. I hope anyone who's on my team is listening to this.
The importance of writing everything down
instead of relying on memory.
I have ordered notebooks for everyone
that I said, I know I'm old fashioned,
but you just write it down
because it makes it so much easier.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I mean, look, it's another obvious,
too obvious sounding idea at first, but is that the almost almighty power of a checklist.
Like the whole idea, if you want to break through to a high level of contribution, is that you need to take the current operations that are using up your mental energy and make them easy.
You want to not have to think about things. If you think
they're essential, you want to be able to get them done whether you think about them or not.
And by having a checklist, you take out the cognitive strain of having to remember. I've
got to remember this. I've got to remember this. We're terribly bad at remembering. Human brain is
not well designed for this. We have tremendous deep memory, right? Like we're talking
like hundreds of years worth of DVR level quality video running in our brains. We got masses of that
deep storage, but the RAM of our brains, what we mean when we say remember something is ridiculously
small. So this is why we forget even the most obvious things.
And so the answer, as you become more successful, life is becoming more complex. You're having more
responsibilities. More is going on. If you have one child, that's more than no children, right?
As you both know. If you have four children, you've got more responsibility. So what you want
to do is create systems that make it easier
to be able to do it. So the checklist, I mean, we just did it this morning with our children.
We have two children at home right now. Two are on these service missions for two weeks,
building schools and cool stuff. The ones that are home, Anna and I are tired of saying,
have you done this? Have you done this? Before you get on a glowing screen, you've got to do
these things. It's mental strain every time we have to remember it.
And we created it previously.
We just hadn't printed it out again this summer.
A do this list before you even ask for a glowing screen.
And just having the checklist removes 10,
I don't know, it's like,
that's like 90% of the strain
is resolved by using a checklist. It's like, it's like, that's like 90% of the strain is resolved by using a checklist.
Taylor, Taylor, are you having your checklist out when you're listening to this?
Okay. Checklist is, you can do it for really everything, but what it also helps you to do,
so it helps you one, not have to think about things, but it also helps you to look at your
current process. Work out, is it efficient with the podcast from end to think about things, but it also helps you to look at your current process,
work out, is it efficient with the podcast from end to end? You can do it from the time you decide
who you want to have on to the time the thing ships. Having the whole thing written out actually
in a checklist will help you to not forget things, obvious things, will help you to decide,
do I even want this step in the process anymore? It will help you to be able to help other people
do it because you can delegate it more easily. This is the process that I want you to follow.
It's a simple sounding solution, but it's a really helpful one as we grow increasingly complex so
that we take the burden out of our minds. Yeah, no, I think like speaking to podcasts,
you know, I get this feedback, it's so hard to do. It's hard to do, well, there's a lot of things
that are difficult, but it's hard when you start to tap in all the other stuff that people don't want to
write down the scheduling, the posting, all these things. But if you systemize that, like you said,
put it in a checklist, it actually makes it easier because the main thing you need to focus on when
you're doing a podcast, obviously is this. Like I need to be able to sit down and have a conversation
with you without being so stressed out about all the other shit that goes into building this. But
a lot of people just, they don't think about systemizing it. And
so it becomes overwhelming and that's, you burn out. Yeah. I mean, I think that in terms of,
in terms of order operations here, you want to start with the simplest possible
checklist that will achieve the goal you want, right? So you want to, you...
Give us an example when it pertains to writing, because I definitely want to write another book.
Give me a really micro example of what you're talking about. So say I don't have a book proposal
and I don't, obviously I haven't started the book. What are your thoughts on how you're
going to structure that list? I mean, I just went through this myself again. I just signed,
literally actually signed the contract, I think this week for book three. And it was so easy.
I almost was like, did that really happen? Because the first for Essentialism, I wrote this whole
thing. It took me a month of graphical work. And I really was proud of it too. And that's what
got us going. Book two, I flew to New York. We still had a meeting. And that's what got us going.
Book two, I flew to New York.
We still had a meeting.
I mean, what we sent, what my agent sent was like a two-page document.
It was way less.
And this one was, it was like me, my editor,
my agent on a phone call.
It was, what was the,
there was hardly anything to talk about.
Hey, here's the idea.
This is what we want to talk about.
Do you, you know, do you want to do it?
It was so much easier. It just almost didn't,
had no drama. There was no, it almost wasn't marked. It's almost funny that it's signed now.
So I think you, you ask, and I said, so let me give you language behind this. It's,
it's don't take the existing process you followed in the past and simplify it.
Start with zero and say, can I do this in one step?
Is there a one step?
If it's not one step, is there two steps?
I'll give you an example of this.
So this real name guy's name, this is Mike Evangelist.
He was part of a company that did DVD burning when DVD burning was like completely new.
Cost you $35,000 to buy one of these machines.
It came with a manual that was 1,000 pages long.
Then the company gets purchased by Apple.
And Mike and others in the team
given two weeks to prepare a presentation for Steve.
So they know they have to make it simpler.
They understand that.
And they work really seriously hard
on trying to simplify their process.
And they're proud of what they're about
to bring to the table.
They have their slides.
They're ready to go.
They've got rid of so much features,
so many added stuff.
And they think this is so simple.
He walks in, he goes on the whiteboard,
he draws a rectangle and he says,
you could just drag whatever you're going to burn
to this one button
and the one button you click, burn. That's the app we're going to build. this one button and the one button you click burn.
That's the app we're going to build.
That makes me horny.
I like love that.
But he's like that.
That's amazing.
So he's just all about efficiency and simplicity.
And the key was, so Mike suddenly said he and everyone else was embarrassed about the presentation they were planning on giving.
They never gave it.
They like, okay, that's not what we're going to share.
What he learned was that they were
starting from complexity and trying to get to simplicity. He was starting with zero. That's
what I would say to you. It's like, start from zero. You're not in the position you were when
you were writing your first book or your second book. Like, start right now. What's the minimum
numbers steps? I mean, literally the contract I just signed is the same contract I signed last
time with like three differences. The book's different, the numbers like this. There's hardly anything
different. There didn't need to be. So don't overcomplicate it. You say, what's the minimum
number of steps necessary to get the result that you want? I think this applies to conversation too.
Meaning I feel like people, our friend Jackie calls it circling the drain, right? Where you're
just like, especially in companies,
like they don't need to have everything over explained.
Like just get to the point.
Your next book should be called Get to the Fucking Point.
Yeah.
So that's interesting that you should say that because.
Is that the third book?
Well, it's not the title.
You know, that's, that's.
Well, no, because I was just listening to what you're saying.
And I, you know, we have all these different conversations and companies
and half the time I'm sitting there like get to the goddamn
point. And I don't ever want to disrespect anyone to interrupt, but I'm like, everybody's smart
enough in these organizations to understand what we're trying to do. And if you do require further
explanation, there's ways to do that. You need to get to the point right now.
No, but you get what I'm saying. Get to the goddamn point.
I think the ability to be able to get to the core of the point fast is a pretty rare skill.
And it's a really valuable one.
Especially like if you're pitching a company or something.
It just is.
I mean, really in anything you're doing to be able to, I'm struggling with the language
to express all of this, but that's what the writing process is for.
But like accelerated understanding where you can work together to quickly get to what really is going on,
to what really matters. So you don't waste time, not just in the conversational process,
which is what I think you were bringing up, but even more important, the wasted cycles people
spend when they work on the wrong stuff. I mean, that's incredibly expensive. If everyone's
just busily working on all the wrong things when this is the real issue and everyone's talking
about these other issues over here. So creating, figuring out how to be able to understand each
other fast so that you can get to the real issue quickly is, I think, a skill that's particularly
relevant right now. Let's also do that with emails and text messages too,
because a 20-page text message and 20-page email,
if you're not getting to the point to an email for me,
I just glaze over.
Nobody reads these long emails that get sent.
No one reads it.
No one reads it.
Just literally two sentences will do.
I tell people this all the time.
I give it as coaching to leaders. I have somebody that sends very long emails and I literally am like, it's
not just sent to me, it's sent to lots of people. I'm like, no one is going to read this. No one's
going to read it. It's too gnarly. I think that's a great tip. It sounds like anyone who is writing
those long emails needs to also read both your books because that'll help. And I think he
needs to talk to Dear Media. Well, let's talk about that after for sure. But listen, Greg,
I mean, we love your work. Huge fans over here. I think that this audience, us personally,
like everybody listening can get a huge benefit from reading both. I'm excited to dive into
Effortless. I think it's an area that we can all work on. I regularly go back to essentialism.
Maybe we can do a little book giveaway. I just want to pimp out your books right on. I regularly go back to essentialism. Maybe we can do a little book giveaway.
I just want to pimp out your books right now. I think that your books to me represent selling time.
It gives me my time back. So it's more than just buying a book. If you want more time in your life,
purchase these books. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. Learning to get to the point. Can't wait
to read your next book. And honestly, results, right? Results. That's the thing. I think there's a reason you... The
reason you have an audience that you have and work with the people you do is because
these are results-oriented people. They want the results. They don't want to waste time.
They want to get right to the root of it. And I think that's what your books do. They help
frame it out. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out.
I would recommend people just go to essentialism.com as a new initiative that we've just barely launching out. People can go and take a 21-day
essentialism challenge, a small micro sort of masterclass quality videos, but just these tiny
daily things that you can do to make it easier to do the things that matter most. That's what
I'd recommend. And both your books can be found on? Everywhere. Everywhere. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. Your Instagram handle
is at Gregory McEwen and you guys check out his books, Essentialism and Effortless. And if you
haven't listened to the first podcast with Greg, definitely go back and listen to that.
Thank you for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Do you want to win a copy of Greg's latest book? I mean, I'm telling
you, you guys are going to want this book. I have dog-eared the shit out of it and used a pink
highlighter all over it. So you're going to want it. All you have to do is tell us your favorite
part of this episode on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostic. And as always, make sure you've
rated and reviewed the show if it's brought you any kind of value. See you next time.