No time to read? Get the main key insights from this summary of Greg McKeown’s Effortless in just a short listen.

A few key insights from Chapter 1.

1. All too often, our society seems to cherish doing things the hard way. This results in the mindset that in order to overachieve, we must overdo. This can lead to problems down the line, because if we’re overworking, we’re making things more difficult for ourselves.

2. To invert this assumption about our world and work, we need to ask if the opposite is true: “Could our work be made easy?” Asking this simple question can lead to new perspectives and ideas, and almost always, better and easier solutions.

3. For businesses, it seems natural to believe we must solve the most complex problems for the greatest rewards. Instead, we should look at the most valuable opportunities with the easiest problems to solve. When we lose the preconception that easy means inferior, we begin to get rid of our problems.

4. The Effortless State is a mindset of feeling focused, energized, and unburdened by our daily problems with work and life. As we begin to strip away complexities and difficulties, and actively choose to make our lives easier, we begin to find ourselves in the Effortless State.