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Hello boys and girls ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is, my job to interview, world-class performers from all different disciplines, all different areas and also, to have people on who curate best practices. And I consider my guest today to be someone who falls into both of those camps. His name is Greg McEwen at Gregory McEwen, spelled MC. Ke o, WN naturally. He is the author of the new book, effortless.
Make it easier to do it matters. Most, and a previous book of which, I'm a huge fan. Essentialism subtitle the disciplined pursuit of less, which at the New York Times, bestseller list, and has sold more than a million copies. And I have saved my highlights from that book in my Kindle in Evernote printed them out. Highlighted them. Read them dozens of times. That is how highly I think of this particular work. He is also a speaker in the host of the popular party.
Podcast. What's essential. He has been covered by the New York Times. The New Yorker Fast Company, Fortune, Politico ink, and many other outlets and is among the most popular bloggers on LinkedIn. He is also a young Global leader for the world economic Forum. Originally from London England. He now resides in California with his wife and their four children. You can find him online at Greg. McKeown.com MC ke o. WN once again on Twitter at Gregory McEwen, Facebook, Greg McKeown speaker Instagram,
McEwen Greg, welcome back to the show
him. It's great to be back with you. And I thought we would
start with some leftover bits from our first episode. And for people who are interested in knowing how much content will be overlapping a redundant, my goal is to make it close to 0. So in other words, if you want the joyful experience of listening to conversations with Greg, we had a blast in our first conversation and my goal is to dig in areas. We didn't have a
A chance to explore last time and I'm going to start with one that might seem very random and it's more of a fragment than anything else because I don't have much context. And that is, what is Gandhi's only poem and how did you come across
it? Well, gandu became a barrister in London and might have stated Barrister, but he had an emergency come up in the South Africa with his family there. So he travels to South Africa and while he's on the train, he's kicked off. He is told you can't be in first class and he won't
Leave. He's bought the tickets. He's allowed to be there from his point of view, but it's in the middle of apartheid and he is not permitted to be there as an Indian, so they throw him off and that becomes a decisive moment for him. What am I going to do? And it was essential enough that he decides to stay and fight the law that allowed them to physically. Throw him off the train, and he was successful. But it took him a long time. He was there for 23 years before he was successful, I had to go to jail along the way.
A whole series of things after that, he went to India and what he's best known for the great standoff with the British Empire. And he wins through a series of essentialist experiments, really he figures out. What is essential the thing that's going to matter and what he finds is salt that infinitesimally small but infinitely important items. Salt was one of the reasons the British could so effortlessly.
Troll. So many Indians and so they control the production of salt and therefore of bread and the whole food chain. And so that was where the idea came to him to be able to walk across India in the demonstration of Civil Disobedience and make salt at the beach became known as the Salt March because some 600,000 Indians followed him and the British stand back and say, well, look who is this man and where does this power come from? He's got no political position.
He's got no money and yet he's able to command this sort of loyalty. This type of leadership and that continues until eventually brings Independence for the largest democracy in the world at that time. 300 million. People course, now far beyond a billion as became the father of India when he died. The US Secretary of State said, here is a man who has shown, that Simplicity is more powerful than Empires and Einstein said of him.
She has to come. Will scarce believe that such a one, is this ever in Flesh and Blood walked upon this Earth, Bobby? This is all High Praise And I think deservedly when I happen to have the opportunity to speak about essentialism in South Africa, and I went to the Phoenix settlement where he lived for that, 23 years to the house where he lived. I was given. What I was told was the only poem he ever wrote and I found in there for words.
That to me, a great mantra for life and also really the very essence of essentialism and they were this reducing oneself to 0.
And that really is what Gandhi was all about. What he was doing, was stripping himself of all the things that maybe other people thought they needed to do. The other politicians at that time, or just everyone else who's a accumulating stuff wealth, or all these things and he just said, I just want to pursue my Essential Mission, what it was. I came here to do and it's about that stripping away process. And so to me those words are beautiful.
Four words, they're powerful words. They've come to be symbol and mantra', an ideal that I want to work towards.
Thank you for other context. I was familiar with the use of salt as a symbol by Gandhi and
I was so impressed by how he was able to and really in many respects needed to, but others would have failed.
Keep his use of symbols, extremely simple. He was able to use Simplicity with such great power and I'm curious if there are symbols that you use for yourself, and they might take the form of mantras reducing oneself to 0. Are there other symbols for you? I know we spoke of piece of artwork called The Listener last time which I looked up and enjoyed so much.
That I ended up buying a print of it to put on my wall, sir. Perhaps, you could take a moment just to describe that. But are there? Other symbols, is anything come to mind? When I ask that question that you use for yourself, maybe not so much for others.
Yes. Speaking Chris to The Listener. I mean that the idea behind this is by James Christensen and he always write up a description of his painting. So it's not just the
The sort of speak for themselves, he speaks for them. He's passed away now. Unfortunately, but what he says about the listener, he says, look in this Dolby Surround Sound of our daily lives, we all have to find the mute button. And his idea is that that since a painting can't have a soundtrack that the Title Character at the center of the listener, has found that the best way to shut off the noise in the visual cacophony, that's in the painting, is to close his eyes. And so that's really the image. It's someone who's listening
To his still small, inner voice and remaining centered without being overcome, its to find peace in a busy world. And that's what he's capturing and said to me, that, I mean on this picture, that's images of Picasso, you can find lots of famous people on their politicians and so on. And I think it's mother-in-law's in there, but it's all these people trying to pull on his attention and his energy and his listener is a center, and
That's why it's a favorite painting for me because and I have it in my office. Here is a reminder with all that goes on. All the noise, all the competing voices to, listen, not even how we would say to our own voice. So to speak, not just to what I want. What I want to go after in life, but quiet it even that a different voice friend of mine, describes the difference, between the scared voice, and the sacred voice. And I need to get
Get past, you know, even the scared voice that might be mine in, get to that Stiller sacred voice inside and and and that's that's why I love it. That's why that is a symbol to me in terms of other symbols for me, one that just came to mind after you ask. The question is actually another painting. Oh man, I am. I am emotional even even thinking about this. So,
I've got to tell a story to put it into context. Please. Is that is that okay?
More than okay
encouraged is so few years ago and I'm for children. We moved into beautiful area is white picket fences. This is this no Street lamps. It's like it was built in the 50s and the whole world moved on and nobody told anyone here and you've got more horse ways than the
the roads and it was just this beautiful environment to raise our children in and one of my daughter's Eve, especially drived, she just like never wear shoes anywhere. She's always climbing trees. She's just voracious reader. She writes masses in her journal. Every night. She loves to name the chickens, the animals. She's she just full of light and energy. I, once I often take one of my children with me when I travel and
Want one of the trips as on, with her hour into the trip. I literally text my wife and like she has not stopped talking for one hour, just just
just pouring out
of her, as she's just vivacious and amazing. She just sat especially seem to thrive in this new environment with space and out in nature and and then she turned 14 and she taught less. She took longer to do her, chores less of a shh, slow more.
Awkward and and I just said, well, this is pretty age, appropriate behavior, you know? That's, that's going to happen. That's fine. But then in a routine physical therapy. Visit she failed this very basic test and the physical therapist just said to end up clearing, pulled her aside and said look that really is unusual that shouldn't have happened. You might just want to go to a neurologist about this.
You don't have to be warned twice, right? Like don't have a lot. I'll get, i'll get to that. You know, we, we immediately did this, and it got our attention. And we take her to a neurologist and what we had previously put up as being just evidences of being a teenager, we suddenly saw through a new lens and realize that these behaviors might be much more important and they were. And also as we then paid attention.
We found that her capabilities, inexplicably would just in a freefall. So instead of being vivacious and outgoing, she just stopped almost speaking at all in sentences. It would be like one word answers to anything. The emotion went out. It was like taking a, you know, one of these old record players and you just make it goes really slowly. Maybe she couldn't even like it would take her.
Two minutes to write her own name, 45 seconds, I remember timing it to write the last three letters of McEwen and and we went to a neurologist after neurologist and we're doing the things that we could do and they couldn't even give us the beginning of a diagnosis. Everything came back negative sort of good news, but bad news because you have no idea what's going on and she is fully on the way to becoming comatose. And then you know,
Dying in a coma. I mean, that is literally where we are, and we don't have anything to go on.
And I remember in the midst of this I mean it is this the stuff that Agony is made of right? This is already a free four month period. I remember getting very quiet and actually I'm Frank to say I mean I I was praying about just what on Earth to do
and,
And words came to me, but the words of a painting that we have in our home, the words that came to me, clearly was she will find, what is lost?
And that is the name of this painting. It is a beautiful painting, people can look it up. It's the image of a woman and many other people, their source of symbolically look a bit like Angels, but you could interpret it, a few different ways but they're all.
She can't see them in the painting, but they're all trying to touch her. They're trying to bless her. They're trying to reach her.
And there's no further explanation of that painting, but for me, it means of course, a very different thing in that moment. There is an assurance that no evidence can support and we don't even at this point, have a diagnosis, never mind a treatment, never mind, it's going to be okay. I mean nothing's going to be okay. Logically. Nothing is okay but somehow there is this sense Beyond it.
It's been a long journey, it's been two years of all of this has happened since you and I last spoke on here and she's had treatment quite miraculously, had certain treatments in order to test Jenny BP said, we're going to treat her in order to learn what might be going on. We have one neurologist who had that very clever idea about how you might use treatment instead of wait for Pure diagnosis and then treat you treat in order to learn and learned a great deal.
Then return back into much of the state of before and just over this summer. So, in the midst of the pandemic went through an aggressive treatment end and is back. I mean, she's back and I wouldn't have said that once in two years but as of this moment she has found what is what was lost, she's vivacious and funny. In fact, I just put it on Instagram yesterday, their video of all of our children dancing. We can get to why they were dancing. But the
They're all dancing in the kitchen and I just managed to clip just an image before. They realize that was videoing them. You know that's a symbol to me that matters and how that answer came is so connected. Also to The Listener and this deep principle we got that's the answer to your question.
Thank you Greg I can't even imagine how
Terrifying and profoundly difficult.
That time must have been for you and your family. Are there any other approaches or tools that you found supporting words? Anything that helped? Not just you but also the family during that period of uncertainty
especially well, one of the other Impressions I had was to look up a chapter in
A book that I had read before and it was about cultivating a spirit of optimism and happiness. I think that's the name of the chapter and I didn't just feel like, oh, I should just read that again. But I did feel that that sensation was I should do it every single day and I did because you know, you need whatever will help you can get in this moment and what
seemed to happen in that extremity was that there were
Neural patterns in me that were being rewired. So on a daily basis, every Temptation exists to fall into very unproductive emotions and habits. Something like this is so out of your control is so vital. I mean, there's a, there's a variety of things that you could fall into.
But one of the things you can fall into is just me. Course you could be complaining, you could fall into what I would call the heavy path, depression exhausted you you could try to solve the problem, just through sheer effort, you know, we could just everything is going to be, there's not going to be any space for anyone but Eve you could destroy your marriage, you could destroy your family culture, all of these things weren't just hypothetical. I mean,
They were right there, there was that opportunity. And as I was listening, I read first of all, and then started listening every day too. And I hardly missed a day in those first four months of listening to that. There was this other path, this path of, of trusting, of of, Hope of good things to come, and the necessity to choose that path, and I would Now call that the lighter path. I mean, it's it doesn't feel super light, but it's lighter.
The first and so what grew out of that was instead of the heavier path. Well, why is this happening to us? Why Us? Instead of going down, just all worst-case scenarios is everyone trying to be helpful of course, but sending well, maybe she has this. Maybe she has that, you know, they're not doctors and urologist for. They're trying to help but these things they're sending to you. I just like, catatastrophic diagnosis, you know, and instead of that path.
'The it was like this. It was, is there anything that we can be grateful for? Oh, then we're going to say it, say it clearly say it loud, say it to each other. If we can see, anyone doing something, right? We're going to talk about it in our family. If we could find humor, my oldest daughter. Grace used to hold Eve's hand as they'd go to class or if they were going to and she would just walk with her and she would just do anything to make her laugh. There was a little sense of humor still in her.
I was definitely different but she didn't move one iota away from her, you know, sometimes people in awkwardness or whatever wants to move away and she didn't and so she brought humor into it. We would get around the piano and we would sing. We would read together that night. We would, we would do the small and simple and even enjoyable things. And so what was it? X agonizing, but could have been seriously worse, even
Was actually punctuated with joy. I mean it actually made us it made our family culture when this pandemic happened. It was almost like we had a cultural antidote or something that we all knew instinctively, how to be and how to just we just going to invest in the culture. Again that's the first thing we're going to protect that asset. So all these things we can't control
Don't control what's going on inside of our family and this culture. And it was a great advantage. In fact, in that sense, when all of these things happened around us, I've come to think of that as being these two paths, heavier, path, lighter path. That you can always make something. However, rough, it is worse by a response. Or you can always make something a little easier by your
response. Thank you. Greg. Do you recall? And maybe I just didn't hear
Hear it. But the name, the title of the book you mentioned. You were reading a chapter and if you don't we can put it in the show notes later and I can get it from you after we speak. But do you recall offhand, what the title of the book
is the author of the piece. It's a combination of lots of different torques and speeches and writing is Gordon be Hinckley. It is a church leader and every one of the truly most dynamic leaders that I've ever ever met ever known, you can go in,
See him on Old recording of Larry King and so when he was still alive he was on 60 Minutes all over at me. Credibly Dynamic leader, but just tremendously optimistic and was able to, to have an impact, a positive impact all over the world. He wrote a different book, not the one, I was referencing. Although there's overlap called standing for something that did you know, did extremely well and be a, we can get the action for the show
notes. Okay. Great. So the author is Gordon be Hinckley and we'll get the title and for those listening
Thing will put this in the show notes at, Tim dot blog, forward, slash podcast coming back to a few things that you said as a segue. So you mentioned in the throes of this situation with circumstances,
Outside of your control, there is a very understandable temptation to White, Knuckle and throat. Everything including the kitchen sink at it to to make it because it is that is your daughter's health and and restoring it become the top priority. And I think there's a very understandable
impulse to basically allow that to remove all the oxygen from the room and that you fix it by applying more work by working Harder by increasing the volume. And I suppose, that's as good, a bridge as any to effortless to your new book. So I really have deliberately not done any homework on the subject matter.
From a handful of notes that I have in front of me. But it's timely for me also because I feel like
It is possible to.
Use essentialism and 80/20 analysis, and so on to determine the most important things to focus on and even to following that focus on them. But in so doing I think there is probably and I'm stretching a bit here and I'm going to hand the mic over there is a heavier path and there's a lighter path. There is a path of spaciousness. That's a word. I've been thinking a lot about with respect to my own life. He's in spaciousness.
Does this have to be difficult? Is a question that I asked more and more frequently. So could you tell us the Genesis story of this book or comments in any way that you think is appropriate
if you just nailed it and I couldn't have written this book?
A few years ago, I mean you know, the pressure, there is it's a positive pressure but the pressure there is if you've written a book that's been successful to write the next one and you're supposed to do it every 18 months or whatever. The normal cycle is and every time I went to do it, I felt like I shouldn't, but I didn't know why. There was no really good. Reason I wanted to, I liked it but just felt like, no, you just wait, which isn't great for me. I'm not particularly patient person, but I did. And I live just literally
I wouldn't have written this book without the experiences, including definitely including the experience with Eve. And and so, in fact that is sort of the background is that so essentialism comes out. I mean, that changes everything for me. I'm traveling all over the world. There's, you know it's just and it's what I want to be doing. There's no complaint in any of this. I mean, I want to be in with rooms full of people who want to become essentialists and want to hear about it. I mean, everything in my life is now more want to do than before
Or everybody doing a book signing and it's like one of these trips, I was on, is like 300 people around the building and they run out of books and never done that before. Go back to the room at night, and it's just like, some of these things are a blur and one of the group's I work with successful, entrepreneurs, as working with them. And one of them says he talks about this, the big rock theory that we were all know, the big rock theory, right? Is you've got this container and if you put it in the small,
Grains of sand first and then the small rocks and then the big rocks, it doesn't fit right? That's the first part. And that's how it's supposed to work is that if you put the big rocks in first, then the small rocks and the sand and it all fits. And that's like, first of all, I mean, I believe that forever and it's very analogous to essentialism, you know, invest in the big rock. So, the essential things, your health in your relationships, then your important projects and, and all of that. I feel is true and right, but I started to feel
I'll that there were cracks in my assumptions because
I was being more selective than I had ever been. I'm not writing the next book I pause on the Stanford class. I was co-teaching and the list could go on the significant things. I'm not doing and being trying to be highly selective. But I'm also by this point, you know, father of essentialism, whatever the father of four children now. And so there's all of that and you want to be there for them and I wait, they're inconvenient that can feel to be there and to respond. And so, the question that grows up for me as I'm traveling one day as she's like, happy
What happens if you have too many big
rocks, need a bigger jar. Okay. Jeannie? Right to left. That's like
for that's for real, right? And it's like yeah, I'm being selected but what do you
do? You're being waterboarded by opportunity?
Yes, sure. Yes. I'm sure. And and we can say less by responsibility. Sure. That these are things you want to do. They are essential that you like
So now you've got a choice of what to do. You can either fail, you can actually just a while, it doesn't. Okay, I'm not doing that essential thing or you've got to come up with something else and as I'm out there traveling and I'm having this thought I get a phone call and it's my son jack on my wife's.
Phone, which is gets my attention and and I'm hearing him he's a pale-faced and he's trying to explain, you know, Eve was eating and this and that. And my wife saying with turn the phone around and this is when she's having her first massive, tonic-clonic seizure. So
I'm already feeling too many rocks, then you throw in a crisis that like, just blows everything up. Adrenaline gets me through the next few hours, right? Taking the red-eye. Back hospital visits and all the neurology appointments. Everything I've just been talking about, but normal life doesn't stop you normal responsibilities. Don't suddenly just disappear and that was really when I remember, it took me probably longer than maybe it would for other people to just admit it you know, is it
You're right. Essentialism. You don't want to be admitting, they're so perhaps, but it took me a while. And finally, I'm just like, Anna. Look, I'm just not, I'm not well, and what I learned through that Crucible was. I was doing the right things and that's essentialism but I was doing it in the wrong way. And effortless is about doing the right things, but in the right way I was like the weightlifter who's lifting with their back. I'm like the you know, I don't know.
Who's doing leading the do all by hand instead of, by a machine. I mean, I'm doing the right things. Maybe I'm doing them in a hard way is so this is the point of decision. As I do, you put the rock down, or do you find an easier path if you can't work any harder, you've got to find an easier path and I think there's a lot of people. Yes, it might not be the daughter and the situation specifically as I'm describing. But if nothing else the pandemic itself,
That has pushed people to a similar Point High Achievers, High performers, who are on the edge of exhaustion, they can't work any harder. And yet their impulse is to work harder because that's what got them here. That's what got them success. And so, even as they approach exhaustion burnout or even go past that they still think, the only way out of this, that's what I've done before. It's been hard work, I'll just hard work my way out of this.
And I think that's a really high risk. And it certainly in hindsight would have been for us. If we had gone down the harder path, the heavier path. We would have nothing left to deal with the second time when she relapsed. I mean we would have you know I'll spent and then what do you give up then what do you lose? You're losing more and more rocks all the time. So that's really is the story behind effortless is.
This requirement, this need to discover, is there an easier path and to Joy for me. Now and I feel real responsibility for this is to bring that to people because I just I just know I feel quite emotional about talking about this book because of what we've covered I suppose but also because I somehow can feel it in me
the
unbelievable burdens that people are in right now. Some of them talked about many of them done in silence especially if you're a high performer, you
I mean, this is the problem. There's this group of people and it's expanding group of people. These are the people who aren't complaining so they're silent. That just the pivoting when you need to Pivot, they're working hard. They're doing what it takes to doing home education. Now suddenly this group has spent a year in this mode and I think a lot of them closer to Breaking than they've ever been. I mean they just read 85% of people feel their well-being as is worse than it was a year ago and that's just one symbol of this.
So to me, in ways, I absolutely didn't predict and couldn't have predicted, I think effortless is an idea potentially, whose time has come. Because as we really in a way unfortunately it hits at a time when I think it has the power of relevancy.
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So Greg, where would you suggest we go from here? And I rarely ask that question and interviews, but we have a lot of options and you're probably more aware of the range of those options than I am. There are notes in front of me that we could explore because I'd love to certainly share tactics and specifics with people in terms of what you've learned and what you're applying what seems to be giving you the best effortless return on investment so to speak.
I would has sort of changed your experience of working on the essentials for instance, so I'll just give a sampling. I'm not saying this is the direction we have to go, but why you need a done for the day list solve problems before they exist? Visualizing what done looks like how to take the first obvious action harnessing the strength of 10. These are just a few that I circled for myself because I found them. Curious first step to clearing clutter in your head. How effortless inversion can help solve a problem how to make your essential activities enjoyable and
And on and on and on, we have dozens of options here or we could take a different fork in the road and love to get your thoughts on what makes sense. Certainly, I want people to come away from this interview if they are unable to read your book with some approaches strategies tactics or techniques that they can use,
well I didn't come into this web and answer to that question, of course. But I think
I think we need to before just shifting to tactics. I think we need to at least have a perspective a bit broader about how to even think about this effortless way and we may find some interesting ways to explore that great. There's three in a sense effortless is almost three books in one, they're connected, but
The first is like three concentric circles. In the middle, there's effortless state
Then second is effortless, action than third is effortless results and they build on each other, but they're still quite distinct and effortless state is. I mean, it's something we all know. But we also know, being out of the effortless State, the out of the effort, the state is like, you know, I mean, it definitely happens to many people. Me included end of the day, you're exhausted. You start to see everything.
Everything people say, as you get an email, it sounds like a slight to you. You can't find your keys. Nothing. Nothing's working it, and it's because you're fatigued, but one of the things I found in the research is that when you're fatigued, you actually don't. You're not a good judge of being fatigued. So, so you think you're seeing things as they are, but you're really just seeing them as you are. And so you start to get everything wrong, everything starts to feel hard and one of the
Be enjoyable to me, ideas is really that, that even when things seem very hard, many problems can be solved by, you know, having a warm Meal, hot shower and a good night's sleep. We wake up the next morning and suddenly you find the keys right? Where you left. And then you suddenly you see the email you received. It's like, I don't know. I know how to respond to that Grace for this no problem, and in suddenly things are back in their proper perspective. And that's just one way of thinking about this effortless state.
And part of the deeper work of effortless, state is to do with figuring out. What is cluttering you up? Right now? I think of each of us as having super computer capabilities, I mean I'm mind is so Advanced is so impressive. It is built for figuring things out and processing and so on. And and yet it's just like my laptop can be a times starting to run.
Low because of all of the the cookies have been added to it and so on and the metaphor is well in a few seconds you can clear all of that out of machine and it's working a lot faster in a similar way. I think one of the most important effort of strategies is to figure out what burdening butts.
You know what? We're holding on to.
And so this is different than a sort of quick fix approach. It's like we have to maybe do a little deep searching in terms of what we are holding on to what grudges were holding on to what we haven't forgiven, What complaints were holding on to things that are using up more and more of our hard drive our Ram so that it's making everything harder. There's a story I came across of a man who is a fictional story.
Of a man who was walking along his respected in his community, he leans overseas, little piece of string on the floor, he picks it up, he likes to fix stuff and he just got that could be useful and and then the same day at the same time in the same square somebody else loses their wallet. They see him picking this thing up and they assume and believe it's the Lost wallet accuse. Him of it. Tell everybody about it. He insists it's not true but they
They judge him harshly. And so he's like a pariah in the town, and everybody is wherever he goes, they, you know, it's awkward now, they don't trust him. Now, this is course, is a rough experience, but he gets so fixated on it, so obsessed. By it, that he just can't stop talking about it, everywhere. He goes. It's a little piece of string of just a piece of string, and he just even after people would have got over it moved on and okay, just kind of forgotten it, do no worries. He's still
He's talking about, it gets sick over, he loses his health over it, he literally on his deathbed, it kills him. He's on his deathbed up, a little piece of string, it was a little piece of string, you know? You just can't do it. And so here he is, he could have got back to what was essential, What mattered he could have. Got back to making a contribution but all of his energy on to what really was important. But instead he's consumed
With this like that, he's experienced, this judgment, this harsh judgment and so on. And I don't know why I'm really thinking this right now, but I just wonder for you
here. Here we go. Finally, take the gloves off and get
dirty for you. Are there
Burdens grudges things that you haven't forgiven things, that you've collected that you are holding.
That adjust making life harder than they need to be in some way.
And I really don't know if you have something here. I'm just feeling this moment and I'm just putting it to you. What is your first thought when I asked you
that with respect to does it, would you like me to speak to grudges specifically or other types of
Let's just call it withhold or kind of persistent.
Psychic, drag things that fit in that category.
It's a good description, what you just had? I mean I'm open to both but I'm just going to put grudges to you.
All right? So I will say that a lot has happened since you and I
Last spoke and I took our conversation, very seriously, and I won't spend a lot of time revisiting it, but we went through an exercise about with respect to finding the essential and identifying the blocks the obstacles. Both real and more often perceived the reasons for not doing the essential the commitment side. Made to the in essential Etc. And a lot has happened since then
that
My energy has to be precise on that, what you were talking about. That time was the thing. You identified was a book that you wanted to write that you were writing. In fact, you spent years working on it, but there was the drag was just feeling somehow. So burdened with this has to be perfect. And I feel like I might get judged quite harshly. If I do this and how I intend to do it. And so there were things that were keeping you from actually proceeding with it.
And it felt to me, I don't mean to overstate it but a moment of at least small breakthrough that's how I remember it.
It was very insightful and it stuck with me and I had a lot of conversations with people. I trust afterwards and many months later decided to take the easier path. And what I mean by that is I had in my mind the
Assumption or the belief that it should be a book. And the most important component of that entire book on healing was the disclosure of childhood abuse childhood sexual abuse, in my case from h 2 to 4 and the tools and approaches that had most helped me to heal from that. That was really the that is the core of the book that I had intended to write. There's a lot more to it, there's a lot more surrounding it. There are many consent.
Dark circles as you might say. But that was really the key
piece and I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to say, clearly, thank you to you. Now I've shared that outside of this moment but it's so important what you have done in sharing this and you putting it out there and that takes courage and as we all know, courage is awful. Feels awful and you've done it, and it really matters.
Thank you for saying that and to try to tie this together. I ended up releasing it as a podcast after conversations with my girlfriend and understanding that books. Take a long time especially my books because of the size of phone books and in three to five years, people would die whether of natural causes or suicide or otherwise, or they might
Psycho emotionally shut down and they would just be so many losses in terms of that extended protracted writing process that I decided to put it out as podcast. And the question was, how can I make this as easy as possible for myself? Because I knew it was going to be fucking hard. I knew the whole thing was going to be excruciatingly on multiple levels and so I constantly ask myself,
Of how can I make this easier? How can I make this easier? Don't do a book to a podcast? How can I make the podcast easier? Don't make it a monologue, make it a conversation. How can I make it easier? Don't commit to publishing. It have the conversation record it and reserve the right to never have anyone listen to it. Etc. Etc, etc. And both in preparation for that. And after that spent a lot of time, I know I haven't directly answered your question. But this is
Getting around to it sure both before and after that decided that I needed and wanted to have safety nets in place and to prepare myself for this to prepare, my team to sit rules such that I would be as likely as possible to hold my footing, because I've been re-traumatized by exploring this in the past and then, and I tempted to do writing related to this, and it caused severe problems in my life for many months.
So I was prepared to be destabilized and I wanted to decrease the odds of it being catastrophic. So I began to commit to certain practices and also sessions with people, one of whom is named Jim dettmer, dth mer. He has been on this podcast and a very
Important piece of the work that I've done with him, has been related to identifying unsaid zhun complete, Ron completed and so on that represent with holds that would include grudges and trying to engineer some form of closure. And the closure could just be letting it go and some very visceral sense in some way that
Yul's complete. So the easiest way to take things off your to-do list or to finish things on your to-do list or other is to remove them from your to-do list. So you're actually catching me at a an unusual point in my life. If you look at it from the perspective of zooming out of the rest of my life, I have had a life full of grudges and full of anger and it just so happens that you are catching me at a point where
Having this conversation at a point where I've done since this podcast came out, if I'm remembering correctly, last September, September 2020. And for people who want that story, you can go to, Tim top log for such trauma. I won't belabor it here. It's intense, and it's not for everyone. But for several months, prior to that up. To now, when we're recording, as I look at the calendar, you know, late February. This has been constant work, do I still have grudges? I think the answer is yes, so let me try.
To if it still makes sense, it's sort of do a quick search function.
Actually I want to ask you before we do that. Just what is the process that you have gone through? I certainly don't mean to retell the story because what you're saying is so valid about that when we have to tell and retell and retell sure traumatic stories. But what what have you done to closed?
Loops they should specify and I'm glad you're asking that.
At the work was far beyond the aspects of my life or grudges related to the trauma and that I think, and a lot of this is speculation, almost all therapy is speculation for being honest, with ourselves that I had many, at the time, adaptive responses to the abuse and there were other examples of abuse, that I didn't even get into in that episode. But I had certain adaptive responses to that.
to survive as a child who
could not defend himself and had very little agency, right? And those adaptive responses at some point became maladaptive, they outlive their usefulness and they became very unhelpful at best and very damaging and self-destructive, in other cases. And I think that rage and anger and a mindset that really defaulted to offense is the best defense.
Which I still believe on a lot of levels, that's actually, you know, line that I tribute to a lot of the best athletes I admire, but I what that meant, is that anger? Which on some level I think and that offense and that attack,
default
was a byproduct of the, in some ways, the trauma that I experienced, but the problems that it created in the grudges,
Has that stuck for long periods of time. We're not directly related to the traumatic event if that makes sense. Does that make sense?
Well, I think it does. Because what you're saying is that you're in this position and I'm no therapist, I need to be careful, but it sounds to me that you're in this defenseless position. You are coming up with not just stories about it. Where you're so young. I mean my For Heaven's Sake. You barely understand stories, what will
Is when you're still trying to make sense of this evil and this unprotected this and all of that you take on these new this way of being in the world and part of it sounds like it says too strong for what you've said, but it's like almost a predatorial positioning. It's not like I am going to destroy you but it's a sense of threat. I remember a therapist. I went to describing it this way.
They said there's two states, you can be in, you can be in a, what is this state? And then you can be in a, what the hell is this state? Her words, not
mine. Yeah, let me if I could just bookmark that for a second. So I would say, you know, I certainly wasn't, I'm not sure if this was I'm hearing a correctly but dude, I was not predatory. I was highly weaponized if I felt, I needed to retaliate or defend myself. So it was very much in the vein of Bruce Lee, right? And I'm gonna
Of mangle this, but he has a quote along the lines of you. Graze my skin. I pound your flesh. You pound my flesh, I break your bones, you break my bones, I take your life, that was the mentality and, you know, put another way there's a met major Holdridge retired. This is US Marine Corps as a quote, and it's sometimes it's entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledgehammer. And I think that that was my feeling right. If someone
He inflicted pain on me, I felt it was my obligation to return it upon them tenfold a hundredfold. And you know, I think there's actually still a place for that but it as a default it wastes a tremendous fucking amount of energy so not not to take you off track. I wanted to allow you to continue but
that's that's not attractive, is important. There's a big difference. I think you're right between predatorial and highly militarized.
You know, it's more like a trigger ready to trigger. You're like don't mess with me. Like I'm fine, I'm good here but if you mess with me I am coming after you, I mean at least it makes sense to me. This is a minor example but I remember where I was growing up in England and I was walking down the street one time just in the downtown. Absolutely doing nothing. But walking into people walking towards me. I didn't even think you can register one of them.
M. That's probably about 12 at the time he was 16 ich I would say two of them just have almost arm-in-arm together and then he just punched me in the face. Just straighten the nose, just like broke my nose, just hard,
And I was so shocked.
And I turned around and they were just laughing this walked off. And that was it. I didn't have, there was nothing in me ready to respond to that. There was nothing, I was prepared for. But I remember years later as an adult. I mean, I haven't even thought about the experience, but somebody didn't hit me, but they went to kind of pretend hit me when I was an adult. When I was in a mall, almost the same situation to be walking towards me and I just lost it. You know, I didn't I didn't actually have a fight or anything but I just was like, so,
Ready to because of that pre-programming and that experience and of course it's not very helpful to have that pre-programming you know in there but it's an example of how when we've had an experience in the past and it can as you already said outlived its usefulness. Anyway that's what I've I'm hearing a you is like yeah I was ready to fight.
You know, I couldn't protect myself before but I was going to protect myself going forward.
Yeah, that's the thrust of it. And do I have grudges? I am sure. I have a whole laundry list of grudges. I'm just struggling to pull up one specifically right now,
but I still want to go back. I know bothering you this but how what did you do said that you doing things to remove them? And I just want to know because that seems like such a valid and relevant thing. How do you close up these
Loops in these things that have been dragging. What have you actually done? Well, there were there
many things. So if there were say commitments that I hadn't completed and that was creating some type of exacting, some cost on my system, then I would either
Take a look at make a list and decide which of them, I would complete or cancel or renegotiate in some fashion. So I could sort of wipe that category clean of any debts that were consuming any bandwidth, then you'd have. For instance with holds meaning unsaid 's things I haven't said to people so if someone consistently does something
Is driving me fucking Bonkers or more accurately in. This is also language modification that I would do that, I am using to make myself Bonkers and so assuming some locus of control for how you respond to these things. So, not a b and c is making me anxious or pissing me off. But I am making myself anxious because ABC has been a shift that's somewhat
But also interrelated having a lot of uncomfortable conversations using Frameworks, fairly simple templates, similar to nonviolent communication and having what Jim would call clearing conversations to take those things that are unsaid and say them in some fashion. So that those aren't
Constituting, some type of loop, right? These imaginary arguments, that at least certainly. I am a master at formulating incredibly compelling arguments and then if they said this, I would say this. And then if they said that, I would say that. And oh my God, I would just rip their faces off and debate and what a mighty victory that would be. I mean, these types of fantasies that, consume incredible amounts of calories, you know, incredible numbers of calories.
I wanted to remove those from the program and that entailed having a lot of conversations to be truthful. End up being fewer conversations than I expected to have a significant impact on energy reserves because fatigue, I've had a lifelong battle with chronic fatigue, for many reasons, including to severe bouts with Lyme disease. Growing up on Long Island, but Energy Management has become more and more important to me than time management. They're related.
But Energy Management like that is the parent resource that determines all other resources in the same way that I think it was Maya Angelou, who said I might be Miss attributing. So somebody will be able to find this quote but you mentioned courage. You know courage is the mother virtue. Every other virtue. At its testing Point. Depends on Courage. Hmm. And I say that simply to underscore the fact that much like anything else. There might be ten
Missions. You feel like you need to have or should have to close open loops and really it's two or three of them that are going to deliver 99% of the relief and I found that to be true. Those are a few of the approaches and people can find the clearing conversation format which can be a bit stilted and odd on the conscious leadership group.
website Consciousness is you would also be well served just by looking at various templates for non-violent communication and separately, used quite a bit of the questions offered in the work by Byron Katie, which I highly recommend to people before stress testing beliefs around some of the grudges or some of the un-- seds
And in several cases, just came to the conclusion that the core beliefs that I was using to enable myself to be so pissed off. Actually, we're very hard to defend, hey, and I was like,
oh, like like what?
Well, for instance, there have been a few examples in my life, where entitlement has carried a huge charge for me, there are very few things in life, that bother me is.
As much as what I perceive to be entitlement. Self-righteousness also probably equally irritating to me, or that I use to annoy myself. Look, I just, I just generally very poor response to both of those things and so my general belief in life is and Amelia Boone is actually the one who uttered this quote. She's a multiple time world champion in World toughest mutter and
And also an attorney and just all-around superstar in many respects and her quote, believe it was in tools of Titans. Originally, when I asked her what she would put on a billboard is no one owes you. Anything like just as just start with that assumption, and you'll be much better off in life and I agree with that. So entitlement, let's just say, my belief is and I don't want to put words and Byron Katie's mouth. But if we take a belief to be a thought, we
We take to be true. If my belief is let's just say my belief is and this is a real example. But I'm listening. My belief is Greg, is entitled right? I'd like you to if my belief were you are entitled that's not my belief but let's just say it was like my belief is your entitled because I helped you with a b and c and then I asked you for help with d and you not only said you couldn't help but did it in a way that I took as very rude, never happened but let's just say
That's the
case. No, but in that example, what I rather suspect is you are describing many interactions. You actually have. Do you know I
don't actually expect reciprocity when I help someone. So I really this actually happens the other way around more often than not where someone has done me some favor, I didn't ask for the book launch and then comes to me with some huge ask and gets extremely pissed off when I say no with a, with a clear boundary
So it's more frequent the other way around, but show up, but I'll give you, let's make it a real example. So I'm not going to use names. But there are cases where I feel like I've gone above and beyond to help people when they've asked for help. Not related to book launches or anything like that. And then there's a something I consider to be very small. Very, very small with respect to an ask and I'm given to know but it's delivered in a way.
I
take to be unnecessarily, rude, when my album, my ask is delivered very in my life from my perspective, very politely etc,
etc. You interpret it as a slight, you feel slighted? Yes.
And then I'll have a sentence like, so and so is entitled. So the way you might work with that in Byron, Katie's the work is you would ask questions like and I don't find that first two as helpful as they might be. Otherwise there are lots of different ways to do this, but
Is it true? Number one. Number two can I absolutely for sure know this to be true and I'm going to get these slightly off but the gist is what's important number three who am I? And how do I feel when I believe this to be true? And then who would I be? And how would I feel if I did not take this to be true? Okay, those those questions three and four, I find very powerful and then the next step that I tend to take is what people would call turnarounds. And
Sounds involve playing with language and then forcing yourself as a thought, experiment to come up with evidence to support new statements for instance, let's just say I'm not going to use your name will say Mark, let's just say it's a Mark. Mark is entitled. We could turn that around by saying Mark is not entitled. Could even use the opposite. Like Mark is generous and then you force yourself to come up with and it's best to do this in writing 325.
Points pieces of evidence that you would use if you were in in in a debate and trying to make that case, then you could have not Mark is entitled, but I am entitled. Then you come up with three to five and three to five is arbitrary but it's just a nice kind of clean range. Then you could go on to perform multiple other turnarounds and by the time you've done that if you're really committing to doing it, seriously with an open mind it starts
To defuse a lot of reactivity. So that would be an example of doing the work and all that's available for free online. If people go to to Byron Katie's
website and what you've just done is you have given a specific tools as always, but around this subject of decluttering, and, and getting out all of specifically, we were talking about grudges, but pain and all these things that we hold onto and, and how they
Clutter rose up. I mean I'm not going to necessarily have you answer this question. It could be rhetorical but like what percentage of your energy.
Has been spent in the course of your
life. Oh God. It's gonna be bad. Yes, go
ahead. No, no. Actually. If you now that I'm honestly, I kind of do want the Oscar. I say that's rhetorical. Then I changed my mind. Like, what do you think it actually is? Well, what does? Yeah. Well, fortunately, she has been spent holding grudges having stories about people that may or may not be true. Just all of that clutter that we're holding with carrying with processing, where everywhere we go.
There it is, with us, it's not in the sense, making the email we're working on next harder. But of course it is, because it's using up all of this Hardware Ram in our super computer, brain, and soul it. Keeping us from being able to do the thing that we really came here to do. I
would add that, I'm going to answer the question. It I would add to that that it's even more damaging in my mind because you develop habits of constructing certain types of
Stories and those Pathways. And I'm not going to make a neurobiological case for this. I'm sure one could. But suffice to say, if we become habitually good at creating stories about being victims, then it will become easier. And easier to later construct stories about us being the victim. If we create stories around certain people having certain traits, and we
If those over and over again, and we have selection bias and begin to pick out all of the evidence points, that condemned these people, it becomes easier and easier over time and therefore the Habit perpetuates, the bad habit, if that makes sense. So, to answer your question, like, how much of my Life Energy? Oh God. I mean, if we went from diff, we just took like Tim from 15 to 35. Let's just say
I shudder to even Hazard a guess. 60% I mean 70% it's hi. I mean just in terms of ongoing stories that the vast majority of the time are never acted upon or most likely don't reflect reality because I'm not actually engaging. I'm not clearing these conversations, I'm not fill in the blank, it's an embarrassingly high number, it's astonishing that I've been able to
To
get anything done. Honestly, I'm not just anything, right? I mean even in the period, you're describing you still will have appeared well were highly productive but I mean that's the kind of rebate and why effortless state is such a vital part of really water. As I Now, understand better about this a different way to live and to work. It's like it's not the task itself that hard in many.
Instances. It's all of this stuff. All of this rubbish.
That slowing is down, that's getting in the way that's making relationships twice as hard. Sometimes 10 times as hard as they need to be because of all of this clutter as we learn to remove that, we start to find, I mean what kind of productivity tip are we talking about here? This is better than any other productivity hack that you can ever come up with a 70 60, 70 percent, return of your capability and energy.
Suddenly back, I mean that's like a massive
upgrade. So, save me. Greg McKeown. What do I do? What do we do if the listeners will like? I need some principles or something. God save us. It is a huge cost and I feel like I'm in probably a better place than I've ever been at this point in time. I'm in knock on wood. So don't jinx myself, but they're still incredible room for improvement. I mean if we look at all skill development,
Went along the spectrum of, let's just say, unconscious, incompetence, conscious incompetence conscious competence than unconscious competence, right? Where you can really execute without having to analyze and crunch everything cognitively. I feel like I'm still very much in the conscious, incompetence realm, I mean, I'm just like, oh my God, like look at this circus, this like panoptix on a fantasy Horrors that I create for myself every fucking day. This is ludicrous. You know now
Just aware of the clown car that's driving through my head all day. So what, what, what are some tools? Yes, what are some tools or if tools isn't the right term principles, anything that we can that we can start to experiment with
one story that comes to mind, and I may have actually shared this last time, but did I talk about the moment? When I was staring back at myself in the Stormtrooper costume?
This one you did? Yes, you did mention that you did mention.
The Stormtrooper, we can, we can revisit it and you mentioned,
let's revisit very briefly. I mean if the point was that I'm suddenly looking at myself in a stormtrooper costume in the mirror in the this is an expensive movie quality suit and in that moment I just like, what am I doing? Like why am I standing here? How did this moment passes?
Not just as him context because you're not in like 5th Avenue, spinning, a sign selling used watches or something. This was for Halloween.
That you would always thought this was what you wanted and now you're let's just say 40 years old, something like that, I don't know.
Exactly exactly. I said it. Well how am I here? Well as I'm pausing to think about I realize, well, it was when Return of the Jedi came out. Yeah, we're talking 30 plus years before that, my older brother. Spencer had said to me
Well, wouldn't it be so cool to have like a movie quality Stormtrooper costume and I'm like, young enough impressionable enough and of course all the hype around the movie, I love that movie. And I just held onto that for 30 years, that's a lightweight.
Example, given the way to the things we've been talking about, but it still illustrates how long things can stay with you. And as I'm standing there. I'm like there's no part of me that actually wants this. Consciously, it's just all subconscious and so that became a shorthand for an hour and I that if I get caught up on something, if I get fixated on something, she will say look. Is it is this a stormtrooper?
And even that question is very helpful for me, symbolically? Because being focused on something is a super strength. That's a super skill is incredibly valuable unless you're focused on the wrong thing.
And then, it's like a classic example of making your life, much harder than it needs to be because you're pursuing something. Now, in this case, 30 years, yes, maybe this is pretty trivial example, though. If you add up the actual energy that was being Drip by drip over 30 years, it's still an immense amount. But to just ask that about other things, we have other goals that we have other. We've emphasized grudges, but it's not the only type of clutter that can get into us. But we can just ask is this
This something that we need any more. Could we just let go of it? Would that be possible to release this
question for you just to get concrete? So, during your experience, with the, with Eve medical crisis with your daughter, did you apply this to anything specific? You can
share. I mean, the thing that comes to mind when you say that is perhaps the most practical skill for getting into the effortless State. Mmm.
It's that crisis was gratitude and I know I almost don't want to say it like that because people think I've done gratitude we know but what I learned about gratitude was this if you focus on what you have you gained what you lack and if you focus on what you lack, you lose, what you have?
Oh, that's good. Can you say that again, please?
Yeah. If you focus.
On what you have, you gained what you lack.
if you focus on what you lack,
You lose what you
have.
Its outstanding.
And so one of the practices that I learned that time but have codified a little better now and this is, you know, this is classic BJ. Fogg tiny habit habit recipe,
just for people who don't know, BJ Fogg so BJ. Fogg is a fascinating guy writer Professor. I don't know if he's still teaching at Stanford. Yes, has has done a lot of interesting fascinating work and practice.
Work related to Habit formation and behavioral change and things like that.
Yeah, he's so great. I mean I just had him on the what's essential podcast and we did this really interesting intervention where we talked about what was essential for him. He identified, it wanted to have the three-day weekend, he's never done. That works all weekend and he doesn't and then halfway through after we identified all I said okay well menu you are the Habit King, man. So that now you have to solve that for me, like you know what you want to do, not teach me how to do it anyway. It was really fun conversation.
So, coming from that, this is this is the specific habit recipe as he would call them. Have a recipe right? You say after I X I will why that's the format and so I started saying okay well after I complain, I will say something I'm thankful for and here's what I learned immediately was. I complain a lot more than I
realized.
Yeah, I think of myself as a positive person and I actually think I am even now, but my goodness.
I just these just subtle complaints all the time, you just see what, you know, going wrong with something. And so you can have so many good things happening but you focus on something that isn't going right? And so that was the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was how fast you can change the mood. If you either say something, you're thankful for afterwards or you catch yourself and do it anyway. So even if I was saying something, I was thankful for not even. I'm thankful for you or something. You have done.
All the people around me.
Would instantly light up, it was a different most so it had an immediate effect. It was one of the fastest things I have found for getting back into the effort, the state. And so, we've started all sorts of habits in, in the family with this, it, it's somebody's complaining, I said, okay, that's fine. You've got to do three things. You're thankful for, you know, you've got to put the energy back, but you just took out and, you know, you can imagine for teenagers. Is that necessarily love this game? They must love that. Yeah, it's it. But Jack my son, you know, one time
but actually often they will just do it Sicilian so on, but one time he's just like, oh, okay, fine, I am so thankful to Dad wants to play this, you know, this dumb game with me, you know? And it made everybody laugh and then suddenly we were already back in the state and we went on and did the other things we're thankful for. I mean literally to me this type of gratitude and thankfulness is so powerful and I used to think of it as a soft principle. It's like made of titanium, it's so powerful and you can even have
Bad attitude about it and it still works. And so I mean that done all sorts of things to build on that. And so here we have all this stress and challenge that we have of covid and being isolated. And because of Eve, we weren't just isolated for six months. We were in complete lockdown. I mean, like everyone else is out but we just like, can't even risk because of the treatment. She was going through. One of the things we did is we started it. Star Trek game. I mean it doesn't sound so exciting, but it's you gather together you come up with a prize. You all want something.
You're going to do or something, you're going to buy or something fun, it doesn't have to be that expensive. And and then there's a series of spaces that we were catch each other. Doing the right thing. And if you do you say, okay, well start for you and anyone can give them to anyone. Most of them are still enter and I but even the kids can give them to each other and you go and draw on when the stash is full, you get that thing, you get to do that experience, whatever. It's so positive and you can't take a star away. There's none of that. There's no downside here. It's all upside in and actually what, again, Mike
Sound trivial is I think anything but in to give a little context of why it's so powerful Barbara Fredrickson. I called this the broaden and build Theory what she extrapolated, which I think is genius is that we don't have good things happen to us and therefore have good emotions. She says you have positive emotion and that leads through a process to good things. So the place to start it again, exposes is confirming of what the idea of effortless state.
First is that if you can get positive, emotion going that a whole series of upward momentum happened. So she identified it this way, she said, well first, it's the positive emotions, you feeling good, gratitude, you can do that. That's one of them. And then you start to have more optionality more options of what you can do and what possibilities exist and what good things are here. And so because you're have options, it means that you are more likely to connect with other people. And so you build relationships,
And so why she calls it the broaden and build theory, is that as you're in this upward, momentum, this positive cycle. You're actually increasing capability. Therefore, are better able to handle whatever the next challenges for, as I suppose it is even in the pandemic. But they'll be something else afterwards. And she contrast that with, as soon as you get into negative emotion, that leads to a reduction of options, right? We know that it's fight, flight freeze fall down. It's very few options that we're going to
To have or what effect does that have on your relationships? It's trains them. All. What does that do? It weakens your whole system, for whatever the next challenges, and so this sort of Doom, look and take place. And so, I really see at the pivot point being within this choice to see what is right here, a little bit like putting on a lot of my fish are actually, but I've heard and done the research. I'm confident this is true. That it's something you can do if you want to be a great fight Fisher.
That you can wear polarized sunglasses. And it's something about the way that the lines are in a polarized set of sunglasses that they kill off the way, the sun reflects on the water. And so, the impact of this is that you can see the fish under the water. Fish were always there but you couldn't see them before and now you can and that's really what this habit recipe. This specific thing this leaning into gratitude in a very deliberate way, conscious way starts to do, you start to see all the
Assets that are there, so then you can build on them, then you can do something with them. What good is here? And to keep shifting back into that gear, whether you're dealing with crisis, or just even in normal life, and I'm not always great at this, I still fall into this. If I leave this conversation, it will be easy to find something that's wrong to complain, but if I take this other path and of course, if I do that, it's all predictable. You start on the downward cycle. But if I say, what is going right here, and I catch someone
Doing the right thing. It just Sparks the whole thing positive and and really, which do you think is easier? Is it easier to be on a downward Loop or in this upward momentum? And so this is one of the reasons I see this has been such an important practice for effortless state with the
concentric circles. Actually, before I get back to the concentric circles, I first want to say you're inspiring me to revisit the 21-day. No complaint experiment that I did many, many years ago. I wrote a Blog
Blog post about it with which was inspired by Will bow. And I think that's how you say his name, who was a preacher or a minister in Kansas City, who gave his congregation purple bracelets and every time they complain, they had to switch arms and start the clock again with the aim of getting to 21 days of no complaining and he wrote a book called the complaint free world. I want to say and I did that experiment and just like you mentioned. Number one, you notice.
My God.
I am
just the poster boy for complaining. This is outrageous. And secondly, how quickly you begin to reap the benefits of decreasing your complaining. It's truly remarkable. So, just with that, said, concentric circles. Why is the effortless outside of effortless state? Which is the center, you have effortless action, and then effortless results? Why are the actions separated?
Separate from the results.
All well effortless action is to do with saying okay, if I want a result one time, how can I make it easier to achieve like this project? This thing, an example for me and my family has stopped there, my son chose when he was about 12 e to side, okay? I want to be an eagle scout, his goal was to do it by the time he turned 14, which is, you know, that's a bit of a stretch and, you know,
We went on this journey together and we did it other than the dreaded final, not just even the final project, which was, you know, fairly big thing at the build this hundred, eighty foot fence, and bringing people from the community, 40 people, go and do it on a day. And it was like, it was actually pretty fantastic. But then, what is is, dreaded is the final report and there are people. I know who have done everything else and then they don't get the final report and they put it off. See.
Seriously, I happen to somebody, I knew he'd done everything but that final report and he finally puts it in.
But when you are old week 37
though, you have to do it. By the time, you turn 18 and one week afterwards and said, he never got an eagle scout because they will know. They are a hundred percent stick was on this which I suppose they have learned. They have to be because if you progress need for three years you could do it for 30 and it because it and so they have this cutting point. So we start moving into that category. And we would know it's weeks, it's not money.
Years. But weeks, we just start working it with. Oh, yeah. You gotta do this and it just starts feeling overly burdened. And so then I literally sat down with him and was like, okay, how can we make this effortless? How can we make this? So, we can actually get the thing done. There were a series of questions that we followed with that. I mean, one is what does done look like just like actually naming it? Well, we are taking a binder to the Scout off is and delivering it and they sign that it is done. That's how we'll know it's done.
Okay. Well, what are the minimum steps required to do it. Not you know some people want to go the extra mile that are not even going the first Mile. And that was yeah
that's sort of what we were
doing. We like oh and we had seen and I'm not knocking this, I mean I we have seen some amazing, really unbelievable. Final projects reports, rather the right up within them in wooden boxes and gorgeous and is fighting is incredible. You know, like the roll
Voice of reports. And I think that was a big part of why we couldn't make any progress, which is like, we just don't have the Sinners. We just, we don't have energy for this with it. And so, we said, okay, we say what's the minimum number of steps when we looked at exactly what it asks us to do, okay, we need to have the photos printed up for it up. We're going to have the written. You don't even have to write essays on the, we're going to have the minimum number of descriptions. He needs to do the work and minimum number of steps possible. So we did that, okay,
Next question. What is the very first most obvious step to doing it? The risk of these kinds of projects is, you're worrying about the Thousand step. And you haven't actually physically taken the first one. And okay, we first physical step is we need to actually get a three-ring binder. You know, we're going to get that. And we had one, we have to go and find one in the house and get it. That is the first step. And in that way, just actually started doing the tiny one step at a
Time minimum things required to get that. And that reminds me of a story. We sort of know some of this story, many people have heard part of it, but I went and interviewed the person behind it. Is, this name is this really? This really is name. Is is Mike, evangelist? And
that's an amazing, it's
amazing. And he's a, he's in Silicon Valley. Hey yeah, Mike evangelist. He was involved in DVD burning before. It was a mass thing. These are like 30.
$35,000 machines, professional equipment. This is a, it's a thousand page manual to learn how to use
it. The DVD, burner fatiguing, the best
system right back in the day. Exactly. And then they're trying to work out a bit more affordable, way of doing it and so on, and they're on The Cutting Edge and so Apple reaches out to them and says, look, maybe we can do something here, maybe we can buy companies so on and they do a deal and they bring them in and they want the software that we've been creating and so on.
That given a couple of weeks they know they're going to meet with Steve Jobs and they have a couple of weeks to like simplify this thing that's going to go on the Mac. That's the idea. And so they have to try and so they take this thousand Page by and they reduce it and reduce that they take all this complex stuff, they reduce it the reduce and they're proud of what they have and they think. Okay, this is so so much simpler than we had before and they go into the meeting. And this is the part, people know that the back story is really important. So Steve comes to the meeting
And they have all of their slides. They've got everything ready for the presentation and the talking about it and the discussing. And as Steve starts talking, they start to get more and more embarrassed about their presentation, and what they're going to do. And finally, Steve just walks up to the Whiteboard. And he just goes, look, this is the software is going to be one button. You're going to draw your file into it and it says burn. That's it, that's the application we want to build and that is what they built and that is what went in, but here's the point and
I really like this from Mike evangelist. He said, he said, sitting there he learned, he was doing simplification wrong. He was going from the complex to the simple, where what he really needed to do. This is his phrase, start with zero. You've got to start with zero and say, what are the minimum number of steps to get to completion? And I like that story. But that's really, that's really what we were doing with Jack. And his project is like not what other people doing and let's go smaller. It's like let's start with 0.
Row where the minimum number of steps to do it and what you want is completion and if you don't complete it, then it's not done. I mean I'm saying something so circular but do you've got to get it done? And so that is its own achievement and if you don't get it done perpetually because you either have too many steps involved or because you don't take the first action or have to share. This is one of my favorite stories that came across in the research. It's that have you heard of the story of the Vasa?
I don't think so. Can you spell that for me? It might be a, the queen's English. This throw me off,
Wasa Wasa, the
Vasa
And it starts with a v v ASOS A.
Did I say that? No wwas.
Definitely. Don't know. That story. Please continue to
send Ambassador. Okay. I'm going to read the whole thing to you because I the details really matter is that is that okay? With you, you let the the first Leonard about this. I'm excited. Here we go. Well, you're not the first to hear about you first, hear about the way I write about it. Here we go for it. If 400 years ago, Gustav, the second, the king of Sweden,
So, the vital need to upgrade his Armada of ships. He wanted to protect the people from the growing Naval powers that surrounded him, his attention was drawn to building a giant military warship and he found a ship Builder Hendrick. Hudson Tom asked him to build what became known as the Vasa. I've said it wrong. It is VA sa
Vasa this. Which one is because I knew the stories because I can't understand the queen's English. Please
continue this. This project was about most important to King.
Has so much so that he allowed a whole Forest of a thousand trees to provide the lump of the project he opened, the Royal coffers to assured habits and that he would have an almost unlimited budget complete, the project successfully. Unfortunately, the king did not have a clear vision of what the final product would look like or rather you get changed his vision of what the final product would look like. At first, the ship was to be a hundred eight feet long with 32 cannons on Deck later.
The length was changed to a hundred and twenty feet even though the lumber had already been cut to the original specifications but no sooner had Henriques team made the necessary adjustments that the target shifted. Again, this time, the king decided the ship needed to be a hundred and thirty-five feet long. The Canon requirements changed as well, instead of 32 cannons in a single row, he asked for 36 cannons into rows, plus another 12, small cameras, 48 Waters and 10 more similar caliber weapons.
Tremendous efforts exerted by some 400 people to make this happen, but even as they approach completion, the king changed his mind. Again, asked for 64 large cannons and said, the stress of the news is said to have given henrique a fatal heart attack. Still the endless project continued this time under Henriques assistant hind Jacobson budgets. Continue to escalate the effort, continue to expand and the King continued. Changing the end goal in an utterly non-essential addition for a gunship here.
I asked for some 700 ornate sculptures which would take a team of experts, sculptors more than two years to complete to be attached to the sides, the board, and the transom of the ship. And so it was on August 10th 1628. The vassal s Stockholm port for its maiden voyage still unfinished and before it been properly, tested to ensure it can survive. The conditions of the high seas. Meanwhile, the king had found the time to plan a celebration to commemorate, the expedition that were
Fireworks that were foreign diplomats. There was pageantry. And as the ship, sailed away, the gun ports, open, and the guns were pointing out so that they could fire a salute to the dignitaries on Shore, then suddenly a gust of wind caught the sales of the ship causing the massive vessel to tilt. Severely over to one side as the Cannons, tipped into the sea water entered into the gun ports, despite a strenuous all-out effort on the part of the crew, water, almost instantly flooded into the gun deck and into the hole.
Further destabilizing the ship tragically. It took just 50 minutes for the Vasa to completely sink taking fifty three crew members with it. They died less than three quarters of a mile from the shore and so, it was the most expensive Naval project in Sweden's history. Sailed less than one mile before being buried in the sea or because the king had made the project almost impossible to safely complete by constantly redefining. What done looks like that is the story of our. So it
sounds like a lot of software.
Acts
it does in. It sounds like just so many projects. And so that's really what part of what effortless action is about it. Saying look, if you have a thing you want to do, you want to do it one time? You want to actually get it done. And you don't want to kill yourself, doing it is a series of things that you can do. I've covered two or three of them. You can pace yourself, you can make sure that you know, that's what that section of the book is really about your question was, how does that distinguish itself from effortless results?
That's literally my favorite thing in my research for effortless was this final section, which is a little too bad because sometimes people don't, you know, get to the end of the book. And so, so, you know, it's effortless results, right? The difference is this effortless actions about the thing. One time that's by definition is a linear result. You're getting it one time. You put the effort in once.
Then you get the result once effortless results is all about residual results. How can you construct things? That produce your put the effort in ones. You might even put a little more effort in than if you just want the result once. But you put the effort in because you're going to get the result ten times. A hundred times a thousand times. I mean actually it sounds like total exaggeration to say a million times but actually it's not. There's plenty of examples.
Holes where people have constructed systems that keep producing results. So very many times over again and again and really why effortless results? I think is such an exciting subject for me and my son's favorite thing in this is because I realized how many things I was doing were linear result, one time you do it, you go, you do keynote, you've built the system to make that as effortless.
As possible, the results, you know, seem to be good, but it's done. One time, you got one time impact and one travel, one thing. And and that doesn't make it a bad thing of course, but it's an example of like me just discovering like, why am I doing anything that only produces results? One time, I've got to change this ratio massively. And I mean, this is for me personally, one of the things I came away with done simultaneously to the book is launched an academy, right?
Centralism.com. And the whole reason I did it is I'm just like, look, build it once, do it once and it returns 10 years from now, or even more than that. I mean, friend of my, I would say colleague and mentor to me Stephen Covey and he passed away, unfortunately, few years ago, but his impact has gone on significantly. And the reason for that, wasn't by chance. It's because he knew the risk because one of his friends and mentors had died young and he took it all with him, so it was because of that. The Stephen says, okay, well, I'm going
To, I'm going to write the 7 Habits because then it can exist Beyond me. I'm going to build a company, he didn't really himself want to do that work but he built it. So that the system would continue on and on into the future, the residual results is an era of so much upside possibility. It just reminds me of Benjamin Hardy who I just had on the what to Central Podcast and he was sharing this principle of who not how and it really hit me.
Such a great success Inc, summary of this idea that we ought to be thinking not just how do I do a thing and not just hit a wall and feel. Well, I've got to go and the long journey to figure out how to do this myself but just who has already solved this who already knows how to do this. And that was one of my favorite parts of researching effortless was coming across a rule, that Warren Buffett uses when he's hiring people, he's deciding who he's going to work with, who he's going to partner with the best people in the world. He's
Trying to find and he uses three principles. He says its integrity.
It's intelligence and its initiative. And he adds the if you don't have the Integrity than the other two can actually be a problem for you. But that really has stood with me when we think about who not how. And then, specifically, using what I now called the three eyes to assess, who would be a great person to work with. And so anyway, just offer that as a thought about how to produce even more, effortless results, as you try to take this next Journey with podcast.
Self. The adult makes me just reflect on how many of these principles are on some level embedded into your thinking. If you just shift the time frame from short term Rewards or short-term outcomes to long-term outcomes and brings to mind something that my friend of all ramakant who's been on the podcast. Several times has said, which actually, I should say, more accurately typed
Since his Twitter account is very popular at navall and a VA L, and it's along the lines of if you wouldn't work with them for a lifetime, don't work with them for five minutes and no man, that's good and it just checks so many boxes that you could view as discrete problems to be solved. But if you just keep that overarching principle in mind, even if there are exceptions, right. I mean, perhaps if you're an Airbnb and you break something, you need to fix like you're not going to work with this.
This plumber for the rest of your life necessarily, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule as opposed to
around. Well, I just think that puts into my mind. This idea of very long-term thinking again and the importance of it. One of my favorite examples of this residual thinking, where you aren't just thinking about yourself, but beyond yourself, is Stephen l Richards. And his wife, who decided, what we want to try and take time out every summer, go on a family vacation, and so on. And of course,
Most people have that type of thought, but there's grew into something different with they said. Well, what if we could choose a place one time that every single summer afterwards, we wouldn't have to go through that journey of well, where are we going to go? And what are the dates? And so on and what started, as might sound not such a profound question or decision has gone on and on. They chose this one location and here they are. This is I was talking to
A grandson who himself is now elderly. This has gone on now, for 95 years that they are long. Since passed, their grandchildren have started passing away and so they still have great great grandchildren who will meet at various times through the summer. So it's the same location people have invested in different, cabins and all this, and he said he said on any given day through a whole period, like the whole three months, summer, if you go to that location.
Location, you'll find between Thirty and a hundred people that come from the same, Steven Richards that started to me, that's a powerful example of effortless results, the residual result deciding for a long time into the future
and Steven Richards. For those who don't know, is a was a prominent leader in the LDS church in the Latter Day Saints Church. Is that right? Is that the, the the correct Stephen l Richards that I'm thinking
of
Yes, no, you're absolutely right. And and his grandson is Stephen r.covey and it was his brother. John Covey that I was speaking to the told me that story. And so it's really amazing to see that sort of intergenerational
impact. And for those people who have bookmarked the Gordon be Hinckley book that you mentioned earlier. I was able to surreptitiously tap on my phone silently, which is a
actually a trick. I put my phone for those people who are experimenting with podcasting, I keep my iPhone on do not disturb mode. So that if there are items that pop up in the conversation, I can search them on my phone without recording. Any audible noise teachings of the presidents of the church by Gordon be Hinckley was the book within which I believe there is the essay that you alluded to earlier in this conversation thinking of books. I had to wonder when I read your first book.
Essentialism it's like well how do you edit how ruthless must you be when you are editing a book called essentialism? Yeah, that's setting high expectations for the copy editors and the editors and certainly for the the author and this case you. So in this second book, so effortless was there anything that any Darlings
That you had to leave behind anything that was left on The Cutting Room floor that was particularly difficult to leave
out. You know there's so much that you go through in the editing process and some ways. I feel like there's two, three whole books that were written and discarded on the way to this final project. And most of those, I feel really good about, but there is one that still just
I always wonder whether I made the right decision or not with it. It's a particularly powerful story of a mother who is
with her very sick, son at the very what turned out to be the very end of his life and she was sitting next to him in the bed and then as literally as life is sort of training out of him, she climbs up into the bed just to be right next to him. Knowing that the end is really close and here's him say, and these turn out to be, as very last words, sort of, in that in-between phase, when
Still here but somehow not fully you just said, it's all. So simple, Mom. It's all so simple. And to me, that's sort of message, that sort of moment is of Great Value because I think that the spirit of that is just look at anything you're doing, that's making life more complicated than it needs. To be where you're overthinking. It, we overstraining. Where your overexerting, where your
Overthinking, and you may find.
The very thing that's going to help you move forward. You know, it may be as simple, it may be as easy as that
it's all so simple just pausing on that. It's so
Easy in a sense difficult in other senses to defaults, training, to feel like you're not doing enough. If you are not straining, if you not redlining, if you're not pushing to failure in some way, it's all so simple, that's a great story. I mean, it would make a great mantra for that matter and that in my mind sort of baguettes. A question that I may have asked you in the first conversation that we had on this podcast, but I'll ask it.
just in case there's a different answer or if you want to add another answer,
the billboard my listeners. My long-term listeners are probably sick of hearing this, but sometimes, it's sometimes every once in a blue moon, it pulls out a thought-provoking answer. If you had a billboard, here we go. Metaphorically speaking to get a message, a quote, a question, an image, anything out to billions of people. If you prefer a push notification to all of their phones, what might you choose for that?
Yeah, you did ask me that last time, and I love this question and the answer I gave to that before a remember, was liked just that one word and what I meant by it was to choose light, versus darkness, in our life, to look for the like, to pursue it wherever we can. And as I think about that question, now, with the journey that
Has gone on over these last couple of years. I feel like
The word would be the same but with a second meaning so I think still it would be light but in this sense now that the whatever has happened to you in life, whatever hardship, whatever pain, they pale in comparison to the power. We have to choose what to do now in this next moment and in every next moment we have a choice.
To take the heavier path or the lighter path. And so that's what I mean. Now, when I think of that word light, there's a lighter way to do life. One of the things that I came across that I loved in the research was that now can be measured that neuro, scientists and psychologists have assessed in various ways. The amount of time that makes now now, and it's between two to three.
It's and I mean that has profound implications to me, the word now comes from new, this homo, which means a new man or manually ennobled. And so if you connect all these things together, it makes for such a profound thing that in this moment. Whatever's gone. Before in this moment, we have a choice in that two, to three seconds. We have a choice, profound things can happen. Two to three seconds. We've talked about
Some of them, you can say thank you for something. You can say, I'm sorry, you can say, I forgive you, you can say, let's start over. You can say, let's move on,
or you can just pause for three seconds. You can just pause, breathe.
You can you can breathe for three seconds. And so in all of these ways, we can use this next moment to find this other alternative type of liked
choosing the light not
just,
in the sense of tone, or
Benevolent charge, but also in the sense of of weight, whether that be a physical emotional psychological or otherwise, that's cool. I have never had a guest revisit that question. Use the same billboard, but with an entirely different yet complementary. Meaning. That's very cool. Quite enjoyed that. Well, we should not expect any less.
Greg McKeown the author of. As many of you have already gathered essentialism subtitle, the discipline pursuit of less and his new book effortless subtitle. Make it easier to do what matters most you can find them on Twitter at Gregory McEwen MC ke o WN on Greg, BQ in.com and certainly on all the other social that will link to in the show notes at Tim dot blog, for / podcast. Greg, is there anything else that you would like to say?
Request of the audience. Any closing comments that you would like to add before we wrap
up. I just want to thank you Tim for what you're doing. It really does matter in the world and it's just all over the place that I hear from people that are really tuned in and really get a lot of positive from the work that you do. And of course, people see the upsides. I'm sure they can see. Oh, it's great to have that kind of impact in the world and so on but they won't see the downsides of the sacrifices or the
Things that you have given up for the things that you've gained. And and I just wanted to say genuinely, thank you for what you're doing for having me on
today. Thank you Greg for saying that and it's entirely my pleasure. This has been a lot of fun. I have copious notes in front of me. And I really think that at the top of the Pyramid of the note that then can Cascade down an echo.
Through all the other notes is it's all so simple. It can often be so simple and we just have to take the time to look for it and that's something that you've done and I greatly admire your thinking, I enjoy your writing and wish you and yours. All the best. And thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you Tim. Hey guys, this is Tim again just a few more things before you take off. Number one,
This is five bullet, Friday. Do you want to get a short email for me? And would you enjoy getting a short email for me? Every Friday is that provides a little more soul of fun for the weekend and five bullet, Friday's a very short email, where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week, that could include favorite new albums that have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric. As I do it.
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