Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

“When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.”

Your brain performs best when it’s in an effortless state. This is when you feel unburdened by all kinds of mental and emotional clutter. In an effortless state, your body is well-rested, and your mind is attentive enough to do your essential tasks with ease. With so much energy and focus, you can discern the best action to take based on your capabilities.

Unfortunately, most people struggle to live in this effortless state. This is because your brain is often bogged down by toxic thoughts, outdated ideas, and false assumptions. Furthermore, your brain prioritizes strongly negative emotions such as fear and resentment over useful information. This drains your energy, lowers your performance, and makes life harder than it needs to be.

To avoid this, you need to rethink how you live your life. You have to challenge the notion that life and work must be difficult. Learn how to let go of toxic thoughts and emotions that are limiting your cognitive capacity. You should also prioritize relaxation to restore your energy and increase your awareness. Ultimately, the goal is to make it easier to ignore distractions so you can focus on the essential things in your life.

“The simplest steps are the ones you don’t take.”

We’ve been conditioned to believe that more effort leads to better outcomes. So, when we fail to see the desired results, we work longer and push harder. A lack of progress is seen as a sign of adding more effort. We fail to realize that past a specific point, more effort simply leads to less output. Due to overexertion, you get so fatigued that you burn out and start to make silly mistakes.

Overexerting yourself may seem normal, but it goes against your past experiences. If you recall your best work, you’ll realize that it resulted from an effortless experience. You were in a flow state, and you achieved great results without thinking or working too hard. You accomplished more by trying less. This is what effortless action is all about.

Taking effortless action requires you to do things differently. You need to have a clearly defined end goal, simplify your work process, and overcome procrastination. You’ll also have to overcome the need for perfection by focusing more on progress instead. Sometimes, if you want to go fast, you have to slow down, so pace yourself instead of rushing through every task.

“Whenever we want a far-reaching impact, teaching others to teach can be a high-leverage strategy.”

Most people tend to equate the amount of effort they put into their work to their results. The moment they stop exerting effort, they stop achieving their desired outcome. For example, an employee who gets paid hourly won’t earn anything if they don’t put in any hours. They are achieving a linear result, which is a limited way of achieving anything.

A better alternative to this would be to seek residual results. This is where you exert effort only once and then achieve your desired outcome repeatedly. Here, the benefits keep flowing to you whether you’re adding any effort or not, such as when earning book royalties or delegating your duties. This is what it means to achieve effortless results.

Some tools can help you achieve effortless results in your life. Learning and applying basic principles repeatedly is one of them. You can also share knowledge with others and build a trusted team to create exponential impact. Technology can be useful in this. Keep an eye out for any problems that may damage your ability to achieve effortless results.