Effortless Quotes

“Perfectionism makes essential projects hard to start, self-doubt makes them hard to finish, and trying to do too much, too fast, makes it hard to sustain momentum.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns:”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Remember: When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack. Use this”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“the complexity of modern life has created a false dichotomy between things that are “essential and hard” and things that are “easy and trivial.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“In order to succeed at something, you have to get it done.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“To avoid diminishing returns on your time and effort, establish clear conditions for what “done” looks like, get there, then stop.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“By pairing essential activities with enjoyable ones, we can make tackling even the most tedious and overwhelming tasks more effortless.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“What if, rather than fighting our preprogrammed instinct to seek the easiest path, we could embrace it, even use it to our advantage? What if, instead of asking, “How can I tackle this really hard but essential project?,” we simply inverted the question and asked, “What if this essential project could be made easy?”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Strangely, some of us respond to feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by vowing to work even harder and longer. It doesn’t help that our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self-worth. The implicit message is that if we aren’t perpetually exhausted, we must not be doing enough. That great things are reserved for those who bleed, for those who almost break. Crushing volume is somehow now the goal. Burnout is not a badge of honor.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth. For an investment more or less equivalent to the length of a single workday (and a few dollars), you can gain access to what the smartest people have already figured out. Reading, that is, reading to really understand, delivers residual results by any estimate. Unfortunately, very few people take advantage of this. The typical American reads (or partially reads) only four books a year. More than a quarter of Americans don’t read books at all. And this trend is worsening.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Getting more sleep may be the single greatest gift we can give our bodies, our minds, and even, it turns out, our bottom lines.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Life doesn't have to be as hard and complicated as we make it. Each of us has -- as Robert Frost wrote -- "Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep." No matter what challenges, obstacles or hardships we encounter along the way, we can always look for the easier, simpler path.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“If you want to make something hard, indeed truly impossible, to complete, all you have to do is make the end goal as vague as possible.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Essentialism was about doing the right things; Effortless is about doing them in the right way.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Gaining unique knowledge takes time, dedication, and effort. But invest in it once, and you’ll attract opportunities for the rest of your life.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“A Done for the Day list is not a list of everything we theoretically could do today, or a list of everything we would love to get done. These things will inevitably extend far beyond the limited time available. Instead, this is a list of what will constitute meaningful and essential progress.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Why would we simply endure essential activities when we can enjoy them instead?”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Producing a great result is good. Producing a great result with ease is better. Producing a great result with ease again and again is best.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“What is the Effortless State? The Effortless State is an experience many of us have had when we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely aware, alert, present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in this moment. You are able to focus on what matters most with ease.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“There is no such thing as an effortless relationship. But there are ways we can make it easier to keep a relationship strong. We don’t need to agree with the other person on everything. But we do need to be present with them, to really notice them, to give them our full attention—maybe not always, but as frequently as we can.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“essential work can be enjoyable once we put aside the Puritan notion that anything worth doing must entail backbreaking effort.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“What if the biggest thing keeping us from doing what matters is the false assumption that it has to take tremendous effort? What if, instead, we considered the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it?”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“There is no mastery without mistakes, and there is no learning later without the courage to be rubbish.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Break down essential work into three sessions of no more than ninety minutes each.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, “A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“Have you ever found that the more you complain—and the more you read and hear other people complain—the easier it is to find things to complain about? On the other hand, have you ever found that the more grateful you are, the more you have to be grateful for?”
― Greg McKeown, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most