Speaker 1: Hello there, it's Amantha.
Speaker 2: I'm currently on a Christmas break, so I've handpicked a
Speaker 2: bunch of my favorite episodes from the last year to
Speaker 2: share with you. Okay, on with today's best of episode.
Speaker 2: About four years ago, I was sitting in an airbanb
Speaker 2: in New York, and instead of being out exploring the city,
Speaker 2: I was curled on the couch reading a book called
Speaker 2: Essentialism by Greg McEwan. You know when you read a
Speaker 2: book and it transforms the way you think about something, Well,
Speaker 2: that's what.
Speaker 1: Essentialism did for me.
Speaker 2: And when I think about that book, I think about
Speaker 2: how it really made me prioritize what I choose to
Speaker 2: work on. And it also turned me into a huge
Speaker 2: Greg McEwan fan.
Speaker 1: And when I found out that.
Speaker 2: Greg had written a new book called Effortless, I was
Speaker 2: beyond excited to read it. And I was even more
Speaker 2: excited when Greg said yes to my invitation to be
Speaker 2: on How I Work. So, if you have ever struggled
Speaker 2: your way through a really tough project.
Speaker 3: Or if you're maybe feeling like you're working harder than
Speaker 3: ever before, but maybe you don't have the results to
Speaker 3: show for it, I think you are going to love
Speaker 3: this chat with Greg, we talk about some really practical
Speaker 3: strategies to make hard work well effortless. My name is
Speaker 3: doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder
Speaker 3: of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this.
Speaker 2: Is how I work a show about how to help
Speaker 2: you do your best work.
Speaker 1: So writing a book is hard work.
Speaker 2: And I know this because I'm currently working on my
Speaker 2: third one, which Greg and I actually talk about during
Speaker 2: this interview. But I always keen to know from Greg
Speaker 2: how did he go about writing his latest book effortless
Speaker 2: and make that process effortless for himself?
Speaker 4: Well, there were some things that I did that made
Speaker 4: it a lot harder than it needed to be. An
Speaker 4: example is is any day that I worked beyond let's
Speaker 4: say three hours as a max. You know, if I
Speaker 4: tried to do four hours or six hours or longer,
Speaker 4: I didn't just hit diminishing returns, I'd hit negative returns.
Speaker 4: So diminishing returns is where every unit of effort you
Speaker 4: put in you're getting a little less back. But negative
Speaker 4: returns arewhere for every unit of effort you're putting in,
Speaker 4: you're actually getting.
Speaker 5: A worse overall result.
Speaker 4: So you know, the manuscript is getting worse than it
Speaker 4: was before I started that day. You know, you're you're
Speaker 4: you're going backwards. And so I learned that I needed
Speaker 4: to get the pace right. So so I said, okay,
Speaker 4: you know, every day, I'm going to work on it.
Speaker 4: Five days a week. I will open the Google doc.
Speaker 4: That's my minimum standard. I will go into it. But
Speaker 4: the maximum, okay, never more than three hours. We're just
Speaker 4: going to you know, resolve it that way. Similar upper
Speaker 4: and lower bounds for the number of words written, you know,
Speaker 4: never less than one hundred words, but never more than
Speaker 4: five hundred words. You know, you're trying to make sure
Speaker 4: that you don't use up more mental energy. Then you
Speaker 4: can recuperate each day that you're not using up more
Speaker 4: mental energy this week, then you can recuperate this week.
Speaker 4: Why because you want to be able to sustain the
Speaker 4: pace and get the you know, get the job done.
Speaker 2: Talking about the upper and lower bounds idea which I
Speaker 2: found really interesting in terms of going, okay, well, this
Speaker 2: is the minimum I have to do in a day,
Speaker 2: and this is also the maximum. How did you go
Speaker 2: about setting those upper and lower bounds for yourself?
Speaker 4: If you're trying to find the right pace, you just
Speaker 4: have to create some self awareness as to what is
Speaker 4: your optimal input on whatever project you're working on. So
Speaker 4: for me, you know, I had to keep asking the question,
Speaker 4: how can I make this as effortless as possible to
Speaker 4: write a book that can have a significant impact. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm not changing the goal, I'm not changing the aspiration,
Speaker 4: but I'm trying to constantly challenge myself in finding a
Speaker 4: better strategy. Another thing that I did was to try
Speaker 4: to make sure that I had the right.
Speaker 5: Team working with me.
Speaker 4: People that I had a high trust relationship with, so
Speaker 4: I trust their work, trust their research. An editor who'd
Speaker 4: worked with me on Essentialism before effortless, you know, working
Speaker 4: with her again, I trust is so high she can
Speaker 4: go in and work on it. There were times when
Speaker 4: we'd be working in this same you know, shared dot together,
Speaker 4: or the same time a researcher Jonathan Cullen, who would
Speaker 4: be bringing.
Speaker 5: In stories specifically that.
Speaker 4: I'd asked him to go and gather Italia. My editor
Speaker 4: would be working on a section that I'd previously written
Speaker 4: the day before, and it was almost like a Harry
Speaker 4: Potter esque scene where you could see everybody working seamlessly together.
Speaker 4: And there were so many moments like that through the
Speaker 4: process that I thought, this is effortless. You know, it's
Speaker 4: effortless on effortless, it's just amazing to watch this team
Speaker 4: working together and to enjoy it so much.
Speaker 2: Now, what's the question that you recommend asking when you're
Speaker 2: feeling overwhelmed by what you have to work on to
Speaker 2: help sort of raset our thinking.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that you can invert the typical overachiever.
Speaker 5: Mindset.
Speaker 4: So let's set some context here. I wrote this book
Speaker 4: for what my brother Justin calls the hit squad. This
Speaker 4: is for people who are hard working, intelligent, talented, right,
Speaker 4: that's the hit squad part of it.
Speaker 5: This is who the book is for.
Speaker 4: And you know that's who's listening to this conversation right now.
Speaker 4: These are people who want better results continually. In fact,
Speaker 4: probably nobody listening to this would mind if they could
Speaker 4: have ten x results, ten x results in their career,
Speaker 4: in their relationships, in their business, if they're running a business,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, that would be fine. They aspire
Speaker 4: to significant breakthrough results. The complication is that there's not
Speaker 4: one of them, not one person listening to this can
Speaker 4: work ten times harder. And it's that contradiction or that
Speaker 4: creates this challenge because if you want better results, but
Speaker 4: you're already running out of space, already pushing yourself to
Speaker 4: the limit or sometimes well past it, and then you say, well,
Speaker 4: I'm not getting the results I want, therefore I need
Speaker 4: to push even harder. Then what you do is burn
Speaker 4: out and you still don't get the results that really
Speaker 4: matter so much to you. Now, contrast that with what
Speaker 4: I'm arguing in Effortless, which is, you know, what if
Speaker 4: you could make the trivial things in your life harder
Speaker 4: but the essential things significantly easier, well, the value proposition
Speaker 4: there is.
Speaker 5: That you.
Speaker 4: That you could achieve the results you want, the breakthrough
Speaker 4: results you want, but not only without burning out, but
Speaker 4: also with an upgrade in your lifestyle that you enjoy
Speaker 4: the experience more all.
Speaker 5: Along the way.
Speaker 4: You know, that's who Effortless is for, and that's why
Speaker 4: I wrote it.
Speaker 2: And what's that key question that you talk about it
Speaker 2: in the book in terms of something we can ask
Speaker 2: ourselves to help reset our thinking when we are feeling
Speaker 2: really overwhelmed by what we're working on.
Speaker 4: I think the question you're pointing to is just how
Speaker 4: can I make this effortless? How can I make this easy?
Speaker 4: It's not something that I would advocate everybody ask. If
Speaker 4: somebody is not putting in any effort at all, then
Speaker 4: there's a lot of upside to just you know, getting up,
Speaker 4: getting off you behind and going and getting on with
Speaker 4: the job at hand. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: results you can improve. I'm fully in.
Speaker 5: Favor of effort. I believe in it myself.
Speaker 4: I believe in it for my children, I believe in
Speaker 4: it for the businesses I've worked with and built. Nevertheless,
Speaker 4: as I already said that, there's this limit. So one,
Speaker 4: when we ask a better question, we get a better answer.
Speaker 4: And so simply by inverting the question we normally ask,
Speaker 4: which is how can I get better results by working harder?
Speaker 4: You say, how can I get better results by making it,
Speaker 4: you know, as easier? What?
Speaker 5: What if? What would this look like if it was easy?
Speaker 4: And I remember working with someone in you know, perfect
Speaker 4: example of someone in the hit squad, who is the
Speaker 4: type of person she said, who's up till four in
Speaker 4: the morning photo shopping for a youth activity at church
Speaker 4: the next day and no one's asking her to do that,
Speaker 4: But that's you know, she's just wanting better results and
Speaker 4: thinking the only way to it is relentless self sacrifice.
Speaker 4: And she even feels if she eats lunch that she
Speaker 4: feels guilty. And so I said, well, look ask this,
Speaker 4: you know, invert, invert this, break out of that paradigm,
Speaker 4: out of that mindset. Let's see if there is you know,
Speaker 4: what would happen if you asked that question? How can
Speaker 4: this be effortless? You want a great result, but how
Speaker 4: can you do it in an easier way? And she
Speaker 4: gets a call then from a professor she works at
Speaker 4: a university who wanted her to record a semester worth
Speaker 4: of his class, and she just almost automatically jumped into
Speaker 4: the overachiever of mindset. I'm going to get three different
Speaker 4: cameras in the room, so we'll get different angles. We'll
Speaker 4: edit it all together, we'll have intros and outros, graphics, slides, music, Well,
Speaker 4: we'll just wow him. And then she remembered the coaching
Speaker 4: and she said, okay, invert this. Can I get the
Speaker 4: result that he wants with it in an easier way?
Speaker 4: And so then she started asking questions around that. Well,
Speaker 4: in just a few minutes of talking with him, she
Speaker 4: discovered that This was really for one student who just needed,
Speaker 4: you know, to have a few of the classes because
Speaker 4: he's going to be missing them for an athletic commitment.
Speaker 4: And the solution they came up with was just have
Speaker 4: another student record it on their iPhone and send it
Speaker 4: to him whever he was going to miss. The professor
Speaker 4: was delighted. He hadn't thought about that because he was
Speaker 4: over complicating it.
Speaker 5: And she puts hangs up.
Speaker 4: From the phone and she says, I just saved four
Speaker 4: months of time for an entire team for the sake
Speaker 4: of ten minutes with this inverted question. So that's the question,
Speaker 4: how can I make this essential thing effortless?
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: Now in the book you talk about how Richel's habits
Speaker 2: that we've put our.
Speaker 1: Thumb print on, and I love that way of thinking
Speaker 1: about rituals, and.
Speaker 2: I want to know what are some of your work rituals.
Speaker 4: One ritual that I picked up from another entrepreneur is
Speaker 4: that if I'm going to have a lot of phone
Speaker 4: calls to make with people, you know, I may just
Speaker 4: literally go and sit in the hot time and call
Speaker 4: them all back. You don't have to be you know,
Speaker 4: you don't have to be so formal about it all,
Speaker 4: and it turns what could just feel a bit like
Speaker 4: drudgery into something that's funny, and I tell people and
Speaker 4: it's not a secret, and we just laugh about it
Speaker 4: and we get the job done still, but it's in
Speaker 4: a more enjoyable environment. And so you know, that's the
Speaker 4: idea is to splice together something that previously you thought, well,
Speaker 4: it's essential, but it's drudgery, and you say, well, well
Speaker 4: what if you could combine it with something enjoyable you
Speaker 4: want to do anyway, and you create a ritual from it,
Speaker 4: so then you actually look forward to doing it.
Speaker 1: I love that hot tub example.
Speaker 2: What are some other things like I'm thinking of email
Speaker 2: for example, that is definitely a non enjoyable task for
Speaker 2: many people. Have you cracked making email more enjoyable.
Speaker 4: I have a friend who's amongst the most highly productive
Speaker 4: people I have you know, I've ever met. I don't
Speaker 4: even quite know how he does. Everything he accomplishes is
Speaker 4: pretty remarkable. And one of the things he does when
Speaker 4: he is he's very responsive in email. If I respond,
Speaker 4: if I email him, he might email me within two minutes.
Speaker 4: He's very responsive, but he'll be very, very succinct in
Speaker 4: his answer, So he's not carrying the burden. You know,
Speaker 4: when somebody sends you an email and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I don't know what to say about that. Yes, right,
Speaker 4: and then you hold on to that and it sits
Speaker 4: in your inbox.
Speaker 5: I've been guilty of this.
Speaker 4: I've had email sit in my inbox for days, weeks,
Speaker 4: months sometimes and you process it ten times, twenty times
Speaker 4: sometimes because you keep seeing it.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I've got it.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to do about it, and then
Speaker 4: you move on to something else, and then eventually, oh, sorry,
Speaker 4: I didn't get back to you, you know, and you
Speaker 4: don't say it, but dot dot dot, I haven't known
Speaker 4: what to say all this time. It's and you take
Speaker 4: that email task and you make it ten times harder
Speaker 4: than this friend of mine deals with it. He deals
Speaker 4: with it instantly. And so since since my last exchange
Speaker 4: with them, I thought, yeah, I've got to process email
Speaker 4: differently in the next Literally, since then, I've just made
Speaker 4: I've just been decisive about every single thing and just
Speaker 4: responded quickly. And I thought there's something quite nice about
Speaker 4: about getting a quick response from someone and not just
Speaker 4: having it disappear and never know whether you're going to
Speaker 4: hear back from them again and I found it. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a hyper efficient way of dealing with email.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Amantha here.
Speaker 2: We're going to get back to Greg in a moment,
Speaker 2: and in the next part of this interview, Greg gives
Speaker 2: me some advice on how to make a big project
Speaker 2: that I am working on much much easier. And if
Speaker 2: you're enjoying how I work, make sure you connect me
Speaker 2: on these socials because I post quite a bit of
Speaker 2: extra content there. So hunt me down on LinkedIn, look
Speaker 2: for Amantha Inverra I think I'm the only one. Or
Speaker 2: follow me on Twitter at Amantha or on Instagram, which
Speaker 2: I'm getting back into for various reasons, and you can
Speaker 2: find me there at Amantha Eye. You talk about reducing
Speaker 2: the lag indicator for essential activities and a reward.
Speaker 1: Can you give an.
Speaker 2: Example of how you've applied that concept to your work,
Speaker 2: whether it be with your writing or consulting or something
Speaker 2: like that, maybe even with writing the book like because
Speaker 2: that can be you know, fairly grunt work ish, day
Speaker 2: after day hitting a word count. I'm right in the
Speaker 2: middle of that process.
Speaker 4: Myself, so with rating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm working on my third book at the moment
Speaker 2: and on a fairly tight deadline.
Speaker 4: And you're feeling and you're feeling the stress of it.
Speaker 2: I am like, I've I've got a calendar on my
Speaker 2: whiteboard that literally says how many words I want to
Speaker 2: have written by the end of each week in order
Speaker 2: to hit my deadline in October, And.
Speaker 1: Like every day like I enjoy the writing.
Speaker 2: But then some days it's like, oh, I'm doing this
Speaker 2: just so I don't fall behind.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to know, like maybe if you have
Speaker 1: any advice for.
Speaker 2: Me on how I can you know, either like reduce
Speaker 2: the lag indicator, because suddenly, come October, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be feeling really happy because I'm going to be submitting
Speaker 2: a complete manuscript.
Speaker 1: But right now I'm in the thick of it, and I've.
Speaker 2: Got all these things that I need to do and
Speaker 2: research and write about, and I feel overwhelmed and like
Speaker 2: it doesn't feel terrible, but it doesn't yet feel effortless,
Speaker 2: and like, you know, I feel good when I hit
Speaker 2: my word count for the day, but it can feel
Speaker 2: like hard work on some mornings.
Speaker 1: So what should I do? Greg?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got to ask a couple more questions about it.
Speaker 4: How are you on a scale of one to ten
Speaker 4: on your like your energy level right now, like your
Speaker 4: overall physical fatigue. I'm good, I'm good, yes, sleeping well,
Speaker 4: very resting, well, you're relaxing well. Yeah, So then you
Speaker 4: come to do the job. Which part is hard? Is
Speaker 4: it the thought about writing? Like you go, oh, I've
Speaker 4: got to do that again.
Speaker 2: I think it's the idea that I have to write
Speaker 2: this book, but I also have to do my job
Speaker 2: in terms of my full time job. My hours have
Speaker 2: not increased in terms of what I do within my
Speaker 2: consultancy inventium, but now all of a sudden, sixty thousand
Speaker 2: words have to appear from nowhere by October nineteen.
Speaker 4: So I write.
Speaker 2: I write every day as part of my job, and
Speaker 2: so you know, I enjoy the process of writing most days,
Speaker 2: although some days I'd prefer to be doing something else.
Speaker 2: And so it's just kind of going, oh, gosh, I've
Speaker 2: got this huge extra project that I have to do
Speaker 2: along with everything else that I'm working on, and sometimes
Speaker 2: that can feel a little bit overwhelming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can imagine. Is that sounds like that. It's
Speaker 4: the I mean, even what you just said that the
Speaker 4: sixty thousand words that alone just feels like, Oh, my goodness,
Speaker 4: I'm really going to get sixty thousand words done. So
Speaker 4: what do you do now? Tell me your current process.
Speaker 2: What I do now is the very first thing I
Speaker 2: do on almost every workday, unless I've got a commitment
Speaker 2: like a keynote or or something that is not movable
Speaker 2: in terms of time, is that I will write but
Speaker 2: between one thousand to fifteen hundred words per day, and
Speaker 2: I will do that five days a week.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of words.
Speaker 1: It's it's quite a lot of words.
Speaker 2: But having said that, a lot of the research has
Speaker 2: been done, so that makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 4: The hardest thing just oh, I've done this for a while.
Speaker 4: I'm in the Is it that you're sort of in
Speaker 4: the you of the motivational curve where you're halfway done
Speaker 4: with it, and so you've already put in a lot
Speaker 4: of work which you're not actually close to the end.
Speaker 4: It is that the experience you're having.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's it. I absolutely do. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I'm right in the middle of it.
Speaker 2: And funnily enough, I'm at about the halfway point of
Speaker 2: the first draft. Like I haven't gone through my own edit,
Speaker 2: you know, Littlelone submitted it to my actual editor.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I feel, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Feel like right in the trenches at the moment.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's you know, the U curve motivation for those
Speaker 4: who don't know about it, is that you feel you
Speaker 4: feel more motivated at the beginning of a project and
Speaker 4: at the end of a project, and as you get
Speaker 4: as you get close to halfway, that's the that's the lowest,
Speaker 4: the lowest EBB in any project because you can still
Speaker 4: see how much is left to go, but you don't
Speaker 4: have the evidence of success because it's not actually finished.
Speaker 4: And so so I think it. I think you might
Speaker 4: want to construct some sort of reward system for like
Speaker 4: the next literally the next two weeks. You know something
Speaker 4: that you say, Okay, like what's what's a reward that
Speaker 4: you just something that would just be really enjoyable for you.
Speaker 5: What do you love to do? Regardless of this, I.
Speaker 2: Love to read fiction, and I right now would love
Speaker 2: to get a message that would be really nice. That
Speaker 2: is not something I've had done in quite a while. Yes,
Speaker 2: there are two things that come to mind.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's here's you could do this. You say, Okay,
Speaker 4: we have ten days worth of work, so not completing
Speaker 4: the manuscript, but ten days of hitting your goal. I'm
Speaker 4: going to say, for you a thousand words, I'm reducing
Speaker 4: your goal, for you a thousand words a day, and
Speaker 4: every day you've done a thousand words, count it off.
Speaker 4: And I want this graphically in your office so you
Speaker 4: can see it. You're like, you're a you know, child
Speaker 4: in primary school, and you're marking off each day. And
Speaker 4: at the end, you know, okay, at the end of
Speaker 4: ten days of doing this, I get a massage.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: That is one thing that I think you literally could do.
Speaker 4: I think on the fiction, I wonder whether even like
Speaker 4: you schedule your time to write your book, whether you
Speaker 4: don't say, okay, as soon as I hit five hundred words,
Speaker 4: I read a chapter of a book that I love.
Speaker 4: Right now, just give my brain a little bit of
Speaker 4: a break, so you do, like, let's say, how long
Speaker 4: does it take you to do your hundred thousand words?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'd say sort of nineteen minutes to two hours,
Speaker 2: I'd say.
Speaker 4: So maybe you say, actually, fine, you do it like that.
Speaker 4: You say I'm doing a ninety minute sprint. You don't
Speaker 4: even have to call it a sprint. We do a
Speaker 4: ninety minute segment, and then I read for ten minutes
Speaker 4: out of a book that I am really looking forward to.
Speaker 4: So you could have that right on your desk. You
Speaker 4: set your time, you say ninety minutes from now, I'm
Speaker 4: reading that. Well, you know, I'm just going to keep
Speaker 4: going on this with a cycle. There's some really interesting
Speaker 4: research that I came across in writing Effortless, which is
Speaker 4: done by Anders Eriksson, that he was curious about the
Speaker 4: sleep rhythms that we all know about, these ninety minute
Speaker 4: rhythms that you have.
Speaker 5: Each of us to have a good night's sleep need
Speaker 5: three of these cycles.
Speaker 4: And he just questioned, like, what if that isn't a
Speaker 4: sleep phenomenon, what if it's a human phenomenon, that isn't
Speaker 4: just a nighttime thing, but it just a life thing
Speaker 4: that we're all just rhythmic beings that they continue into
Speaker 4: the day. And he found as he continued this research
Speaker 4: that it did continue into the day. And so the
Speaker 4: ramification of that is that we should prioritize three pieces
Speaker 4: of work in the morning in ninety minute approximately ninety
Speaker 4: minute cycles, so that you do your ninety minutes and
Speaker 4: you take a break for ten minutes, ten even many
Speaker 4: as fifteen minutes you go for a walk. In this case,
Speaker 4: you read it fictional. You know, your fiction book, not
Speaker 4: at the end of the day only. Okay, well I've
Speaker 4: saved up all day. Now I can read a bit
Speaker 4: of fiction. But you build that into your schedule so
Speaker 4: that you take that ten minutes, give your brain a rest,
Speaker 4: and you are signaling to yourself going forward, like, hey, listen,
Speaker 4: I write, and then I have this enjoyable ritual almost
Speaker 4: immediately following it, well, immediately following it. How does that
Speaker 4: sound to you? Does that sound like a nice ritual
Speaker 4: for you?
Speaker 1: It does, it does, Greg. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: I've been taking notes as you've been talking, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to do that from monday.
Speaker 1: I'm loving the sound of that. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And just to connect the dots here is what
Speaker 4: we're trying to do, you know, like, rituals are habits
Speaker 4: with a soul. Habits are what we do. Rituals are
Speaker 4: how we do them. And if you can create the
Speaker 4: right ritual, you enjoy the experience of doing it. I'm
Speaker 4: still trying to think for you about what would make
Speaker 4: that first ninety minutes, you know, itsself more enjoyable.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you this, What.
Speaker 4: Are there some days you say, some days you really
Speaker 4: enjoy it versus other days it feels more drudgery, right,
Speaker 4: which makes sense. I mean there's ups and downs for
Speaker 4: all of us. But what is it on the days
Speaker 4: that you have enjoyed the experience, what's different for you?
Speaker 2: I think one of the things, and I've had this
Speaker 2: advice from a couple of guests on the show. I
Speaker 2: think it was Adam Grant and Rachel Botsman, and they
Speaker 2: both talked about how they would essentially end their work
Speaker 2: day with this concept of parking on a downhill slope,
Speaker 2: like they would finish work, you know, like if it
Speaker 2: was writing work, it would be mid sentence or mid paragraph.
Speaker 2: And I think when I've kind of when i start
Speaker 2: the day and I've got that momentum, like I've actually
Speaker 2: started writing the chunk that I'm going to be working
Speaker 2: on the following day, and I've started that the day before,
Speaker 2: then it does it kind of feels effortless, like I
Speaker 2: can get into flow much more quickly. So that's definitely
Speaker 2: something I've noticed.
Speaker 4: That puts me in mind. So of course you can.
Speaker 4: That's a specific thing you could put into a ritual.
Speaker 4: I'd probably encourage you to write up a ritual like
Speaker 4: a recipe for you with writing, because yours will be
Speaker 4: different to mine, will be different to Adams, like everyone
Speaker 4: has their own rituals. And but if you can pay attention.
Speaker 5: To your what works for you or you add that
Speaker 5: in it.
Speaker 4: So we've we've obviously this is now sort of on
Speaker 4: our third specific piece of of the the ritual for
Speaker 4: you know, for you that you have this on a
Speaker 4: list so that you can keep coming back to it
Speaker 4: and tweaking what really works and what and what doesn't.
Speaker 4: I think I think that that's that's part of this,
Speaker 4: you know, creating a ritual. I John Acuff would be
Speaker 4: a great guests at your show if you want to
Speaker 4: have him on. He wrote a book recently called Soundtracks,
Speaker 4: and he's terrific and and one of the things that
Speaker 4: he said is that in his wife came to him
Speaker 4: and said, you are you're miserable to be around through
Speaker 4: the two years that you write a book. And then
Speaker 4: she said, and you're and then you're you're really miserable
Speaker 4: to be around for the two years marketing the book afterwards.
Speaker 4: And it really challenged him to think, well, how am
Speaker 4: I thinking about this work and and you know, many
Speaker 4: many writers have read the idea, well, it's easy to write.
Speaker 4: All you have to do is, you know, is to
Speaker 4: pull up a typewriter and bleed that kind of language,
Speaker 4: and the idea that writing is one of the hardest
Speaker 4: things you'll ever do, and all that thinking that is
Speaker 4: a paradigm, that is a way of thinking, and he
Speaker 4: recognized it as such, and he suddenly said, well, I'm
Speaker 4: going to choose a new soundtrack. I'm going to choose
Speaker 4: a new way of thinking, a new mantra. And the
Speaker 4: phrase he pulled was light and easy. That he was
Speaker 4: going to try to make writing as light and easy
Speaker 4: as possible, and that that's what he'd keep thinking about.
Speaker 4: And as soon as he started getting.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's right, it's hard, so.
Speaker 4: Happy afterwards, but get hard right now, he'd go, hold on,
Speaker 4: stop that that's the one way of thinking about this.
Speaker 4: What about light and easy? And one of the things
Speaker 4: he did in his ritual is he went and bought
Speaker 4: a pair of the Nike.
Speaker 5: Shoes that were used.
Speaker 4: In the the very famous now two hour marathon. You know,
Speaker 4: they make big headlines around the world to get it.
Speaker 4: The first person who ever ran a marathon under two hours,
Speaker 4: and he was wearing these particular shoes they'd created for him,
Speaker 4: and you know, they are, of course light and easy.
Speaker 4: They're as light as possible, and he wore those every
Speaker 4: day that he wrote as a symbolic reminders to reinforce
Speaker 4: this new soundtrack, not miserable and you know, blood, sweat
Speaker 4: and tears to get this done.
Speaker 5: Light and easy.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I'm not saying you have to
Speaker 4: go buy those shoes. I've never done that, but I've
Speaker 4: enjoyed the mantra the soundtrack light and easy.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of what you wrote about, but talking
Speaker 2: about what are the minimum steps required for completion?
Speaker 1: And I really loved that concept.
Speaker 2: Are you able to talk about how you've applied that
Speaker 2: idea with processes in your work life?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, just to set that up just for
Speaker 4: a second, you can. There's all sorts of examples of
Speaker 4: this in business. But I interviewed Mike Evangelist, who that's
Speaker 4: his real name, but he worked at a DVD burning company,
Speaker 4: and this was when DVD burning was brand new by
Speaker 4: one of these machines that cost thirty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: The manual alone was a thousand pages long, you can imagine.
Speaker 4: And Apple comes along and says, well, we'd like to
Speaker 4: buy that because we want the software that you've built,
Speaker 4: and we've got to put that standard on the new Mac.
Speaker 4: So they're given a couple of weeks to prepare a
Speaker 4: slim lined, streamlined I think as the term, I'm looking
Speaker 4: for version of what they've had before. And they just
Speaker 4: keep stripping this away, that is stripping it away and
Speaker 4: stripping it away, and they're so proud of what they've
Speaker 4: been able to do in a couple of weeks. And
Speaker 4: they they're ready for the presentation to Steve Jobs, and
Speaker 4: he comes into the room. Before they get to the presentation,
Speaker 4: he walks up to the whiteboard and he draws the
Speaker 4: rectangle and he draws this little you know, square within
Speaker 4: it that says burn. And he says, this is.
Speaker 5: The app we're going to build.
Speaker 4: You just draw, take what you want to burn, you
Speaker 4: put it here, and then you click that button. That's
Speaker 4: the whole app. And as soon as he did that,
Speaker 4: they all felt embarrassed about the deck that they'd prepared.
Speaker 4: They never shared the presentation because compared to what he'd
Speaker 4: just shown, it looked so complex. There's so many steps
Speaker 4: and pieces to it. And that was when he learned
Speaker 4: what he thought was a really sort of lifelong, valuable lesson,
Speaker 4: which is that Steve Jobs was starting with zero. It
Speaker 4: wasn't taking complexity and whittling it down. He was starting
Speaker 4: with zero and saying, you know, can I achieve it
Speaker 4: in one step?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: And if not one, can I do it in two steps?
Speaker 4: But that's the idea, And so from that the goal
Speaker 4: is can you solve a problem entirely by having in
Speaker 4: a one step thing? Can we remove the steps entirely
Speaker 4: instead of streamlining your process, you're saying, let's start from zero.
Speaker 4: Can we do the whole thing in one step? So
Speaker 4: that's the principle. It's a particular way to approach simplification.
Speaker 4: It says Agile talks about it in the manif Agile Manifesto.
Speaker 4: It's to maximize the steps not taken. If you can
Speaker 4: do this, you start to remove from yourself the knee.
Speaker 4: No matter how easiest step is, it's still harder than
Speaker 4: taking no step. In fact, when I was first starting
Speaker 4: in the podcast, I remember the team, that production team
Speaker 4: sent me a list of instructions that I could send
Speaker 4: to guests, and there's like, you know, fifteen steps to it.
Speaker 4: I remember reading it myself just going, oh my goodness,
Speaker 4: that is overwhelming number of steps. I just thought, there's
Speaker 4: no way I can send this out to guests. It's
Speaker 4: just too much for them to handle if I can't
Speaker 4: even read it. And so I said, okay, what you know,
Speaker 4: start from zero was the minimum number of steps someone
Speaker 4: would need to take to chat with me on Zencaster.
Speaker 4: And once I had the answer, the process was literally
Speaker 4: and what I sent to people who said all these
Speaker 4: fifteen steps was one click on the link that I'm
Speaker 4: going to email you before the interview too.
Speaker 5: I'll start and end the recording it. So all you
Speaker 5: need to do is chat. That was the instruction.
Speaker 4: And so it's a very liberating question to ask, like
Speaker 4: just okay, how can we start from zero? How can
Speaker 4: we do this at a minimum number of steps? You
Speaker 4: start to realize all the stuff that other people think
Speaker 4: needs to happen, including yourself in the past, don't need
Speaker 4: to happen.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Now time has flown, Greg, and I need to release
Speaker 2: you to the world. So I have one final question
Speaker 2: for people that want to learn more about you and
Speaker 2: get their hands on Effortless, which I highly recommend, such
Speaker 2: a great book as well as Essentialism. I still remember
Speaker 2: when I read that, I was actually traveling in New
Speaker 2: York and I have such a clear memory of reading
Speaker 2: that book and fundamentally shifted my thinking on many things.
Speaker 1: So how can people consume more of what you're doing?
Speaker 4: Greg Well, I love that you just shared that about essentialism.
Speaker 4: These really go together, right. This is like the Paul
Speaker 4: McCartney and John Lennon, but both of those artists created
Speaker 4: music separately, but it was the magic happened when they
Speaker 4: went together. And you know, essentialism is about in one
Speaker 4: question is what's essential? You know what is essential and
Speaker 4: if it's not essential, don't even do it effortless? Says okay,
Speaker 4: how can you take that the essential few and make
Speaker 4: those essential few things effortless? And so it's together that
Speaker 4: they really I think that the magic can happen. You know,
Speaker 4: I would recommend that people come to essentialism dot com.
Speaker 4: There's a twenty one day challenge people can take there
Speaker 4: which takes you know, the essential things and breaks them
Speaker 4: down into small micro adjustments that make this, you know,
Speaker 4: easier to do what matters most. There's the What's Essential Podcast.
Speaker 4: I just love for your listeners to subscribe to What's
Speaker 4: Essential Podcast if they've enjoyed this conversation and come, you know,
Speaker 4: come join the party there. And beyond that, I would
Speaker 4: just encourage people to maybe maybe listen to the audiobook
Speaker 4: version of Effortless so that it can kind of get
Speaker 4: a quick overview of the whole arc of the book
Speaker 4: and the design of it. And those are a few
Speaker 4: options for people.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I will link to all that in the show notes. Greg.
Speaker 2: It has been an absolute joy and privilege chatting to
Speaker 2: you and also getting your advice on.
Speaker 1: My book as well. I was very appreciated, so thank you.
Speaker 4: So looking forward to the book when it comes out,
Speaker 4: and it's been a pleasure being with you, Amanta. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hello there. That is it for today's show.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed today's episode, why not share it with
Speaker 2: someone else that you think would benefit and maybe get
Speaker 2: some useful tips to improve the way that they work.
Speaker 2: How I Work is produced by INVENTINGM with production support
Speaker 2: from the Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Martin Nimba who does the
Speaker 2: Audio mix for every show and makes everything sound so
Speaker 2: much better than it would have otherwise, see you next time.