Effortless Summary

Part I - Effortless State

What is it?

• When we are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely aware, alert, present, attentive, and focused on what’s important in this moment. You are able to focus on what matters most with ease.
• When you are in an effortless state, you feel lighter, in the two senses of the word. First, less heavy - unburdened, suddenly you have more energy; but lighter also means more full of light with clarity. When you remove the burdens in your heart and the distractions in your mind, you are able to see more clearly. You can discern the right action and the light the right path.

Invert

• Instead of asking “why is this so hard”, ask - “What if this could be easy?” Look for opportunities that are highly valuable and simple and easy.
• When faced with work that feels overwhelming, ask, “How am I making this harder than it needs to be?” 

Enjoy

• Empower yourself to transform everything you choose to do into an experience that creates meaning and joy - creating habits with a soul - the act of folding clothes is far more than making clothes compact for storage. It is an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle. Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies.
• 简单的事情重复做，你就是专家。重复的事情用心做，你就是赢家。
• Accept that work and play can co-exit.
• Turn tedious work into meaningful rituals.
• Allow laughter and fun to lighten more of your moments.

Release

• Let go of emotional burdens you don’t need to keep carrying.
• When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.
• Each time I complain I will say something I am thankful for.

Rest

• Discover the art of doing nothing.
• Do not do more today than you can completely recover from by tomorrow.
• Dedicate mornings to essential work.
• Break down essential work into 3 sessions of no more than 90 minutes each.
• Take a short break (10-15 minutes) in between sessions to rest and recover.
• Take an effortless nap.
• Notice when your fatigue has gotten to the point that you feel it is real work to concentrate.
• Block out light and noise using an eye mask and noise canceller or earplugs.
• Set an alarm for a desired time.
• Banish all thoughts and just rest.

Notice

• You see, but you do not observe.
• Achieve a state of heightened awareness by harnessing the power of presence.
• Train your brain to focus on the important and ignore the irrelevant.
• To see others more clearly, set aside your opinions, advice, and judgement, and put their truth above your own.
• The greatest gift we can offer to others is not our skill or our money or our effort. It is simply us. 
• Clear the clutter in your physical environment before clearing the clutter in your mind.

Part II - Effortless Action

What is it?

• Accomplishing more by trying less. Stop procrastinating and take the first obvious step. You arrive at the point of completion without overthinking and overdoing. You make progress by pacing yourself rather than powering through. You overachieve without overexerting.

Define

• To get started on an essential project, first define what “done” looks like. 
• Establish clear conditions for completion, get there, then stop.
• Take sixty seconds to focus on your desired outcome.
• Write a “Done for the day” list. Limit it to items that would constitute meaningful progress.

Start

• Make the first action the most obvious one.
• Break the first obvious action down into the tiniest, concrete step. Then name it.
• Gain maximum learning from minimal viable effort.
• Start with a ten-minute microburst of focused activity to boost motivation and energy.

Simplify

• To simplify the process, don’t simplify the steps; simply remove them.
• Start at zero and try to figure out the absolute minimum number of steps required to achieve the desired outcome.
• Recognize that not everything requires you to go the extra mile.
• Simplicity - the art of maximizing the steps not taken - is essential.
• Measure progress in the tiniest of increments.

Progress

• When you start a project, start with rubbish; inspiration flows from the courage to start with rubbish.
• Adopt a “zero-draft” approach and just put some words, any words, on the page.
• Fail cheaply: make learning-sized mistakes.
• Protect your progress from the harsh criticism in your head.

Pace

• Pace yourself. If you write too much, too quickly, you’ll go off on tangents and lose your way and if you write infrequently you will lose your momentum. A thousand words a day is a good amount.
• Set an effortless pace: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
• Reject the false economy of “powering through.”
• Create the right range: I will never do less than X, never more than Y.
• Finding the right range keeps us moving at a steady pace so we can make consistent progress. The lower bound should be high enough to keep us feeling motivated, and low enough that we can still achieve it even on days when we are dealing with unexpected chaos, but not so high as to leave us feeling exhausted. 

Part III - Effortless Results

What is it?

• You’ve continued to cultivate your effortless state. You’ve started to take effortless action with clarity of objective, tiny, obvious first steps, and a consistent pace. YOu are achieving the results you want, more easily. But now you want those results to continue to flow to you, again and again, with as little additional effort as possible. You are ready to achieve effortless results.

Learn

• Reading a book is among the most high-leverage activities on earth.
• When I finish reading a book, I like to take 10 minutes to summarize what I learned from it on a single page in my own words. The process of summarizing, of distilling ideas to their essential essence, helps us turn info into understanding, and understanding into unique knowledge.
• Learn principles, not just facts and methods.
• Understand first principles deeply and then apply them again and again.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants and leverage the best of what they know.
• Develop unique knowledge, and it will open the door to perpetual opportunity.

Lift

• Use teaching as a lever to harness the strength of ten.
• Achieve far-reaching impact by teaching others to teach.
• Live what you teach, and notice how much you learn.
• Tell stories that are easily understood and repeated.
• Your message should be not just easy to understand but also hard to misunderstand.

Automate

• Free up space in your brain by automating as many essential tasks as possible.
• Use checklists to get it right every time without having to rely on memory.
• Seek single choices that eliminate future decisions.
• Take the high-tech path for the essential and the low-tech path for the non-essential.

Trust

• There are three parties in every relationship: Person A, Person B, and the structure that governs them. 
• A high-trust structure happens by design. Design high-trust agreements to clarify 4 R’s: results, roles, rules, resources, and rewards.
• A low-trust structure happens by default rather than by design.
• Leverage trust as the engine oil of frictionless and high-functioning teams.
• Make the right hire once, and it will continue to produce results again and again.
• Follow the 3 I’s : hire people with Integrity, intelligence, and initiative.

Prevent

• Don’t just manage the problem. Solve it before it happens.
• Seek simple actions today that can prevent complications tomorrow.
• Invest two minutes of effort once to end recurring frustrations. To break this habit, ask yourself:
• What is a problem that irritates me repeatedly?
• What is the total cost of managing that over several months, years?
• What is the next step I can take immediately, in a few minutes, to move toward solving it?
• Catch mistakes before they happen; measure twice, so you only have to cut once.