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Author: [[Greg Mckeown]] Full Title: Effortless Category: #books When your computer is running slowly, all you have to do is hit a few buttons to clear all the browsing data, and immediately the machine works smoother and faster. In a similar way, you can learn simple tactics to rid yourself of all the clutter slowing down the hard drive of your mind. By hitting a few buttons, you can be restored to your original Effortless State. When you return to your Effortless State, you feel lighter, in the two senses of the word. First, you feel less heavy—unburdened. You aren’t as weighed down. Suddenly you have more energy. But lighter also means more full of light. When you remove the burdens in your heart and the distractions in your mind, you are able to see more clearly. You can discern the right action and light the right path. The Effortless State is one in which you are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in that moment. You are able to do what matters most with ease. Chapter 1 INVERT What If This Could Be Easy? The Path of Least Effort Our brain is wired to resist what it perceives as hard and welcome what it perceives as easy. This bias is sometimes called the cognitive ease principle, or the principle of least effort. It’s our tendency to take the path of least resistance to achieve what we want. To invert means to turn an assumption or approach upside down, to work backward, to ask, “What if the opposite were true?” Inversion can help you discover obvious insights you have missed because you’re looking at the problem from only one point of view. It can highlight errors in our thinking. It can open our minds to new ways of doing things. Effortless Inversion means looking at problems from the opposite perspective. It means asking, “What if this could be easy?” It means learning to solve problems from a state of focus, clarity, and calm. It means getting good at getting things done by putting in less effort. There are two ways to achieve all the things that really matter. We can (a) gain superhuman powers so we can do all the impossibly hard but worthwhile work or (b) get better at making the impossibly hard but worthwhile work easier. Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, has said, “I have come to learn that part of the business strategy is to solve the simplest, easiest, and most valuable problem. And actually, in fact, part of doing strategy is to solve the easiest problem.”

AI Summary

Effortless by Greg Mckeown presents wisdom from the contemplative traditions.

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