In this episode we bring back renowned guest Greg McKeown for an amazing discussion of how to make your life effortless. Be sure to stay tuned for the end the interview for an incredibly candid "off the record" conversation with myself and Greg.

Greg McKeown is an international keynote speaker and the bestselling author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Greg has spoke at events around the world including SXSW and interviewing Al Gore at the World Economic Forum, where he serves as a Young Global Leader. Greg has worked with some of the largest and well known companies in the world and his work has been featured on Fox, NPR, NBC, and praised by many more.

• Working is connect to results. The question is, is that a LINEAR relationship?
  

  • The harder you work, do your results scale linearly?
    

  • Do you get diminishing, or even negative returns, on over-working yourself?
    

• Are you a member of the "HIT" Squad? Hard working - Intelligent - Talented
  

• There is tons of low hanging fruit if we ask a different question or go in a different direction?
  

• 3 Major Gears of Effortless:
  

  • Effortless State
    

  • Effortless Action
    

  • Effortless Results
    

• How do you clear the mental clutter that makes it hard to focus and get into an "effortless" state?
  

• How do you maintain a positive mental attitude and an "effortless state" during times of great challenge and distress?
  

• People believe that if it's important it has to be hard, that doesn't have to be the case.
  

• Link behaviors that are enjoyable with those that are not enjoyable, to make them more tolerable.
  

• Use the habit recipe of "After I do X, I will do Y"
  

• The "indomitable power of gratitude"
  

• IT's not that when you have great results you feel great, it's that when you have a great emotion, you get great results
  

• Positive emotions create an upward spiral
  

• Have you ever tried too hard to go to sleep? Have you ever tried to hard in a relationship?
  

• There is a "false economy" of powering through. Find a pace that feels "doable" or even "effortless" - do less than you feel like doing.
  

• Consistent, sustainable effort trumps reckless actions and burn out.
  

• Pace yourself. "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast"
  

• Break big goals down into 10 minute "micro bursts" to prevent over thinking,
  

• What's the minimum viable action? What's the first and most obvious action to take?
  

• The psychological present is 2.5 seconds. That increment is enough to pause, reflect, stop, start, or do what you need to do. It all starts as a battle to take control of the next 2.5 seconds.
  

• Seize control of the next 2.5 seconds. You don't have to take on everything
  

• Effortless action = making it as easy as possible to get a result one time.
  

• How do you create Effortless Results?
  

• Ask questions around investing in things KEEP GIVING YOU A RETURN from a ONE TIME INVESTMENT (time, money, etc)

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

• Greg’s Website and Wiki Page

• Greg’s LinkedIn and Twitter

Videos

• Tim Ferriss - Greg McKeown — The Art of Effortless Results, the Joys of Simplicity, and More

  • Greg McKeown — How to Master Essentialism | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

• Talks at Google - Essentialism | Greg McKeown | Talks at Google

Books

• Greg’s Amazon Author Page

• Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg Mckeown

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown

Misc

• [SoS Episode] Essentialism - Get the Mental Clarity to Pursue What Actually Matters with Greg McKeown

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fable.

[00:00:18] MB: Welcome to The Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over 100 countries. In this episode, we bring back renowned guest, Greg McKeown, for an amazing discussion of how to make your life effortless. And be sure to stay tuned for the end of the interview, where we have an incredible heart-to-heart off the record conversation that we later decided to add to the podcast about how to really spend time on the things that matter in your life.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our email list. We have some amazing content on there along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time For What Matters Most in Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word SMARTER to the number 44222.

In our previous episode, we brought back legendary FBI expert, Joe Navarro, to distill a lifetime of spy hunting experience into the five principles that exceptional and outstanding individuals live by.

Greg McKeown is an international keynote speaker, bestselling author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Greg has spoken at events around the world, including South by Southwest, interviewed Al Gore at the World Economic Forum. And he's worked at some of the largest well-known companies on the planet. He's been featured on Fox, NPR, NBC, and so many more media outlets.

[00:02:11] MB: Greg, welcome back to The Science of Success.

[00:02:13] GM: Matt, it's great to be with you. Thank you.

[00:02:15] MB: Well, we're so excited to have you back on here. And for listeners who haven't checked it out, I love Greg's podcast, the What's Essential podcast. He's done some really cool stuff on there. And I definitely recommend checking it out. He's also got a new book coming out called Effortless that I'm really excited to dig into.

[00:02:31] GM: Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

[00:02:33] MB: So one of the themes from Effortless that really stuck out to me, that I thought was something I've wrestled with, honestly, pretty much my entire life. And I haven't ever found a healthy balance between these two things. As somebody who mostly works for myself, set my own schedule, I'm accountable to myself for output, or sitting at home and getting distracted playing video games. So to me this question of how hard should I be working? Is the only way to be successful maxing the gas pedal down, and as Grant Cardone would call it 10X-ing? How do you balance that? And is that really the only path that we can follow to be successful?

[00:03:12] GM: Well, I think that the first answer to that is that working hard, of course, is connected to results. But the question is is whether it's linearly related? Meaning, is it true that the harder you work, the more positive results you'll get? If you're going from zero to 10, if you're going from nothing to something on a hundred point scale, you're going to get some results. You're going to get some action because of that. But the question is is whether that continues to be the case and forever afterwards. So if you want 10X results, do you put in somehow mysteriously 10X effort? And is there a point at which you're actually going to get diminishing returns where for every unit of effort you put in, you'll get worse results? Or even you might get to negative return, where for every unit of effort you put in, you will get a worse overall result? Not just a return on investment for the last item of effort, but overall things are going to get worse for you. Does that point exist? Do you get to that point?

And what I found in my research is that there is a percentage of the population that they are your – Well, what my brother Justin calls the hit squad, the hard working, intelligent, talented group of people whose problem is not being lazy. It's that they are going to try and solve every problem by pushing even more, by pushing even further. And even as they start to get to the edge of exhaustion, they're going to try and solve that problem by pushing even harder. And so it's the strange situation where I think a lot of people can relate to this over the last year especially where they're using up these deep resources just to survive, just to keep going.

I was talking to a business leader. He had phenomenal results over the last year. He's responsible for 10% to 15% of the revenue of a large, well-known tech company. He says we've had phenomenal results. In one sense, it's been a great year. But he said the cost of that has been a high turnover of the people in our organization. And also the people who have stayed have achieved these results through grinding, and it's not sustainable. And I recognize this as a priority concern going into the next year. We have to find a different way to get these results. We've got to see if there is a better way.

And so whether you're thinking about that like an organizational leader, and as with this person I was just talking to, or whether you think about it at the individual level. The question is can you unlock the relationship between effort and results? Could you maybe use your effort differently to get your 10X results? Not work 10X harder. Just find an easier path, a smarter path, a different way, a different strategy. Might we unlock the next level not by blistering stress, mental fatigue, emotional exhaustion. Maybe there's a different way. In fact, if you can't work any harder, you will have to find an easier way. But for the rest of us, that could we do it even before that point of having to do it?

And what I found in this research is so exciting to me is that there is such low-hanging fruit if we'll ask a different question, if we'll go in a different direction, that there really is a far easier set of strategies than we've sometimes used to be able to get breakthrough results without burning out.

[00:06:49] MB: Tell me more about that.

[00:06:52] GM: Well, one of the things that I think is important is to think about this subject as like three gears. Gear one is to do with effortless state, the state that you're in. Gear two is how you take action. How you approach taking action on the things that matter. And the third gear is how you can get results repeatedly again and again without pushing investment once, but getting results many times. So the state is the place to begin. I learned about this through a very personal experience that even now is raw and emotional, I noticed as I go to think about it. We had moved into a beautiful, idyllic area. Really, white wooden fences, no street lamps, more horse ways than roadways North of Malibu. It's just absolutely wonderful place to raise our family, our children. And one of my daughters, she particularly thrived in this environment. She's out naming the chickens and riding horses and climbing so high in trees that make everyone worried around her. Just vivacious in the way she taught everything. And then she turned 14 and seemed to just slow down a bit, talk less, take longer to do chores, little bit awkward. Pretty age appropriate stuff. In a routine appointment at the physical therapist, she failed a response that just shouldn't have happened. But we didn't think anything even of that. But the physical therapist just pulled my wife said Look, “I actually think you need to go see a neurologist. That shouldn't have happened.”

And so armed with that different perspective, we analyzed the whole situation differently. We started wondering, “Well, what if these changes within her aren't just age appropriate? That there's something deeper.” And as soon as we saw it with that lens, we realized, well, that could very well be what's going on. And what began was an absolute free fall in her capabilities because of an undiagnosed neurological cause that nobody can help us with neurologist after neurologist. And so she just started being – She can barely write her own name. She became comatose effectively on a way to coma, maybe die on that coma. I mean, this is weeks of this, months of it.

And really in the midst of all of this, we became aware of a choice we had. Two parts that we could sort of see in our mind's eye. This can either destroy us. Like if we take a harder path, if we approach this in the wrong way, we'll take a situation that's already agonizing, and it'll finish us off. Like marriages fail over this, family cultures get destroyed. And then of course, that's all on top of the medical crisis you’re handling. And fortunately, there was this other path, option that just started to become more obvious to us, which is that there is a lighter path. Like the thing is what it is. That challenge is what it is. We have a daughter who is becoming a shell of her former self. Lost almost entirely her personality, and we have no answers for it. Like those are the facts. And there's no direct way to change that.

But what if you could still lean into all the other lighter, even easier responses instead of, for example, saying, “Why is this happening?” Instead of getting angry and frustrated about all the things you can't control, you could say, “Well, what are we grateful for? What's going right? What humor can we find with each other? How can we protect this culture? How can we maintain?” I didn't have the language at the time, but now I would call it like an effortless state. How can you maintain a positive state where there's positive emotion? And we would get around the piano when we would sing together. And we would laugh together. And frankly, we would pray together too. I mean, we would do the things we could do to maintain a culture of positivity and optimism and goodness. And of course, that didn't mean you pretend that everything was okay. There was crying too. But you didn't just get lost in that so that that became more consuming. As this big story and defining experience for us continued, there was an amazing breakthrough that took place that helped to receive some great treatment. But then there was also unexpectedly a return of all the symptoms. And if we had taken that heavier path, if we'd done it the hard way, if we tried to 10X it, to use the term you began with, we’d had nothing left for the second round.

And see, suddenly, what seems like a nice thing to have, well, you've got mental health and good positive culture, and you're in a good state. That's not nice to have. That's the absolute necessity. It's totally vital in order to make any other contribution. And so what was seemed sensible to us, or good, or a better option was actually critical for the longer path for the sustainability. We needed to be able to maintain over what turned out to be at least a two-year journey. We're two years into it now. As of this conversation, she is completely – She's completely back. She's at full capacity. And so on. We don't know if there's a third or a fourth. We don't know the future. But what we do know is that by maintaining the right state, by coming back to the state. I don't mean we're always in it, but to keep coming back to this optimal positive state, we were able to perform basically at our peak, when we might have been struggling to even get out of bed.

And so that's kind of like – That's a personal experience behind why I'm so passionate about effortless. I mean, of course, most people have not had this precise experience. But especially through COVID, I think almost everybody can relate to the challenge of something happening completely outside of your control, that something got harder than it used to be, that well-being is tougher to maintain now, that exhaustion is more likely to be in existence. Like everybody can relate to that basic challenge. And so I see the principles and practices of effortless coming at a time of great relevance for people who want to perform well, but need to do it in a way that they don't burn out.

[00:13:48] MB: That's such a powerful story. And I really feel for you of everything that you've gone through. And I'm terribly sorry. But I'm glad that things at least seem to be on a better path. How through both that experience, but more broadly, do you – I understand the importance of maintaining that as you call it an effortless state. But how do you actually do that not only in times of great personal distress, but in times of work distress, challenging situations broadly. What are the mechanics of really actually doing that? Because it makes sense, but I feel like in the moment and dealing with something so traumatic, so difficult, it's got to be credibly challenging.

[00:14:33] GM: Yes. I mean, some of the things that I think you do – Well, let me just use the metaphor for a second of – It doesn't sound like an equally dramatic metaphor. But if you think about a basketball player stepping up to take the free throw, we've all seen that. So that's why I like it as a way to think about this. What's the first thing they do? And it's like you can see them doing it. When they take the ball and they're doing the couple of dribbles, there's a moment. Now they haven't actually thrown the ball. They're not in movement. There's a moment. When they're pausing, they're getting into a state. And that's like this is the first stage. It's what you have to keep coming back to. Why? Because that's the place that you're most likely to then be able to perform excellently without stress and complication and forcing things.

So how do you do it? Well, I mean, there's some basic things, right? One of them is maintaining sleep habits, health habits, so that you can just even be physically not exhausted. We could talk about that. There are two things that I came across in the research, two or three things that I think are really especially helpful, and some of them not obvious. One of them is to link the hard job with something you already enjoy, so that you don't just try to enjoy these experiences, but that you actually – Because you create them a certain way, you can have joy through them to enjoy them. And you wouldn't think in, specially, this particularly dramatic experience that we had as enjoyable. And yet when I had to reflect on this experience, I would say that it was punctuated primarily with joy. And so that's something, but I think there're all sorts of practical ways to do this. Now this is another family example. But we'll get together to eat with our family every night. And that goes fine. We have different rituals for that. We’ll cheer, raise a glass to every person around the table. Think of something that's gone right that day, talk about it. We make a fuss about it. That all goes pretty well.

But then for us, there's this problem of after the fact. And even if somebody listening to this, they’re not married, they don’t have children. Okay, fine. But you can still learn from example outside of our normal experience. And so our challenge is that we have to do the cleanup afterwards. And, okay, that's a problem, because every night – I have 4 teenagers. Every night, it's like ninjas. They're gone. They're gone. It's like you blink and all of them disappeared. And then there's the unpleasant task of pulling everybody back, dragging everyone in. I don't enjoy that. They don't enjoy that. The whole thing feels – They've got frustratingly good excuses. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I've got homework to do. I mean, all these things. And the whole thing is stressful. So we said, “Okay, how can we make it effortless? How can we do this?”

So I said, “Okay. Well, we need to divide up responsibilities.” So we get a piece of paper out. We divide them all up, all the different jobs. Who's doing what? We all agree on that. So now there's alignment. We go through a training process even day after day, “Okay, let's go through it.” We read them again. Who's doing what? Let's make sure we're on the same page. Okay, when the day comes. This is it. This is when it's going to happen. And I'll tell you what happened. Nothing. It was the same as before. They were gone. And I thought, “Well, what do we do?”

And it wasn't until my eldest daughter said, “Look,” she just had the idea, “we're just going to put on basically karaoke. We're going to put on loud music that we all love, that we like to sing. To the kind of songs, I mean, even just Disney classics, but it doesn't have to be that. But just songs that as soon as you hear it, you can't not kind of get pulled into it.” And as soon as that music goes on, you get one or two people in the room, and then it just becomes like a little party. And it's really like that. And so the strategy behind that is really just to, instead of to say, “Well, the more important something is, the more drudgery it has to be.” And literally, I think a lot of people do believe that, that's something that's important has to be hard. It has to be. If it's important, it is hard. Yeah. But what if it doesn't have to be that? What if something can be important, but also enjoyable, linked together with something that's fun? Something you already enjoy doing? There are lots of examples of this. I know somebody who makes their phone calls when they've got a bunch of phone calls to make, they'll go and sit in the hot tub and make them. They already like the hot tub. Why not make this a bit more enjoyable? Or somebody else who likes to particular podcast that they listen to every week, and they now only are allowed to do that if they're on a treadmill. So linking together what's essential and enjoyable I think is one good strategy.

I think another, and it's almost hinted at here, but is just the indomitable power of gratitude. A specific tactic that I've found helpful, this is based on BJ Fogg’s research, and who I just had on the What’s Essential podcast. We had a really enjoyable conversation applying his ideas to what's essential to him. But the habit recipe takes the form of after I do X, then I will do Y. And if you want to get into the effortless state, I think the fastest single thing you can do under any circumstance is that you say, “After I complain, I will say something I'm grateful for.” That's it.

That doesn't sound so advanced. Maybe it'd be better to have no complaints at all. But here's what I learned when I started doing that, is I complain a great deal more than I realized. And so I noticed that the second I would complain and I would attach to the second half of the habit, and I spice that together, it didn't just bring me into a better state. It also had the immediate effect on the people around me. Even if I wasn't thanking them for something, even if I was just saying something I was thankful for, it immediately lifted the state. It’s so powerful that you can even have a bad attitude about it.

My son is 14 now. And I was I was saying, “Okay, you complain. So now give him something you're thankful for.” And he said, “Okay. I'm thankful that my dad wants to play this ridiculous game.” But that didn't matter, because it's so powerful in terms of immediately interrupting an existing state gratitude where suddenly we're laughing. It has that effect. To give some context of why this is so powerful, you can look to the great research that's been done by Barbara Fredrickson, in what's known as the broaden and build theory, where she basically just says that it isn't that when you have great results you feel great. Is that when you have great emotion, a series of things happen quite spontaneously in reaction to each other that you'll start to get great results. So this is the process she’s identified. When you have, in this case, gratitude, when you have the positive emotion, what happens immediately is that you start to feel optionality. You just sense of options. On your own, you start to see. If you're confident, if you feel good, you start to see, “Oh, there're all sorts of things I could do to improve my situation.” If there's good positive emotion between people, you can be creative, and synergistic, and so on, because you can work together to creatively come up with solutions. That change then builds the relationships, builds your capacity, therefore preparing you for whatever the next big challenge is.

So this is an upward spiral. And it starts with the positive emotion. It starts with these. And in this case, I'm emphasizing gratitude. And the opposite is exactly the same. If you get into the complaining, criticizing mode, if you get into that state, what happens to your options is that they're reduced. We all know this. It's fight, freeze, fall down. You've hardly got any options. That's true personally. And it's also immediately true in relationships, that suddenly there's more friction, it's tougher, it's tougher to – You can hardly even talk about a subject, nevermind solve it. What does that do? It weakens your overall network and system. So you're in a weak position for the next challenge. So anyway, that's some, I think, pretty fascinating research that she's identified to explain the power of state. And why getting into the right state, using my words, effortless state, is critical if you want to perform better, take better action and get better results.

[00:22:57] MB: Yeah, that's such a great insight. And the correlation or the relationship between being in a positive mental and emotional state, and as you call it, the optionality, the resourcefulness that comes out of that. It's amazing you can look back at a struggle, a challenge, an issue, and sometimes one that could have been bothering you, or vexing you for years. And suddenly you get in the right state, and you realize that the solution has been there the whole time. You just needed the right mindset to see it.

[00:23:27] GM: Yeah, 100%. It's like if you go fly fishing and you put on polaroid sunglasses, the way that polaroid sunglasses work diffuse the light that reflects on the water. And so in an instant, what happens is that you can see under the water. And the advantage of that is you can see the fish. So it's a great advantage, a little tip for fly fishing specifically. But metaphorically, that's what happens when you get into the right state, is you can see things you couldn't see before. You can see what assets you have, what options you have, what resources you already have available. You can start to see how they might fit together and how existing relationships, friendships, network can be brought together and brought to bear. And in a personal sense, where I have personal conviction now around this is that what I noticed once the pandemic hit was that there was this culture, if it happens, a family culture. But surely the same is true for any team, enterprise, any type of relationship. What we found is that there was already an embedded culture that instinctively knew what to do. And I was really surprised by it, that there actually had been an increase of capacity that I hadn't even noticed. We all knew we needed to like we've got to go exercise, and we got to have a routine, and we've got to catch people doing the right things. And so we launched into something we've done before, but haven’t done for a while. There’s this star chart thing that we all set at star chart. We set a goal. We set some reward that we're all going to get. And anyone can catch anyone doing the right thing. And you can give each other a star. There're no takeaway stars. There's no downside. It’s an asymmetric benefit. There's only upside to the game. And that awareness that was so instinctive. Nobody had to say it. That was the broaden and build theory in practice. I was watching it. I was experiencing it. And so I think even now, as people are going through whatever struggles they're going through, if they can use the challenge as an opportunity to discover this alternative way of living, it will be a great advantage to them as they go into whatever the next challenge is down the road.

[00:25:47] MB: So I want to change perspective and come back to something you mentioned earlier to get another insight on this effortless approach. You touched on this idea around do you get either diminishing returns, or even negative returns from working harder? I want to hear a little bit more about what underpins that and what research or data you found that talks about whether that's the case? And if it is the case, how it happens?

[00:26:19] GM: Yes, this is a perfect segue to the idea of effortless action. So far, we've been entirely in effortless state. But effortless action is about how can you get into that right sweet spot where you're putting in the right amount of effort, and you're getting your optimal output without burning out, without over exerting. And that's exactly the right word for this, is to catch yourself anytime you are over exerting. But also catch yourself when you imagine something is so hard that you just give up on it right away.

So there're sort of two problems here that I think effortless action is a solution to. One is you're just trying too hard, right? And like you just think about your own experience, for your own data, have you ever tried too hard in a relationship? And in fact, that relationship got harder and worse because you are trying so hard. Have you ever tried too hard to go to sleep and found that the overexertion, “I really got to sleep. I'm getting up so early tomorrow. I'm so tired,” makes it actually harder for it to happen. Even a goal that you have that you say, “I so want to achieve this.” I was in a race one time when I was young, and I had this idea to pace myself. And then the second the gun went off, everybody took off like a shot. And so I did the same. I just got pulled into it. I just over exerted myself. Within a hundred yards, I literally sprinted like it was 100 yard race. It's a three mile race. I was just toast, exhausted. I just burned out. There's not a proper pace.

And I think that would be one practical answer to the question is, is how can you make sure you have not just a lower bound, a minimum threshold, which I think you ought to have for any important goal. But also, which is more counterintuitive, and upper bound, an upper thresholds over which you won't go beyond.

There's a piece of research. People may be familiar with it. Or it's a story rather of a case study of the two teams. I'm going to do something unusual. Can I just read it to you?

[00:28:44] MB: Please do.

[00:28:45] GM: All right. In the midst of the great Age of Exploration in the early years of the 20th century, the most sought after goal in the world was to reach the South Pole. It had never been done before in all of recorded human history, not by Pytheas, the first polar explorer circa 320 BC. Not by the Vikings a thousand years later. Not by the Royal Navy and all its progress during the years of the Great British Empire. But in November 1911, two rivals for the pole aim to be the first to achieve this elusive goal, Captain Scott from Great Britain, and Amundson from Norway, otherwise known as the Last Viking. They began within days of each other a 1500 mile race against time, a race of life and death. One team would return victorious. The other would not return.

To read their journals, however, you would never guess that the two teams made almost the exact same journey under almost the exact same conditions. On the good weather days, Scott would drive his team to exhaustion. On bad weather days, he would hunker down in his tenant and lodge his complaints in his journal. On one such day wrote, “Our luck in weather is preposterous. It makes me feel a little bitter to contrast such weather with that experienced by our predecessors.” On another he wrote, “I doubted any party could travel in such weather.” But one party could. On a day have a similar blizzard, Amundson recorded in his journal, “It has been an unpleasant day, storm drift and frostbite, but we have advanced 13 miles closer to our goal.”

On December 12th, the plot thickened. Amundson and his team got within 45 miles of the South Pole, closer than anyone who had ever tried before. They had traveled some 650 grueling miles and were on the verge of winning the race of their lives. And the icing on the cake, the weather that day was working in their favor. Amundson wrote, “Going, and surface is good as ever. Weather splendid, calm with sunshine.” They’re on the polar plateau. They had the ideal conditions to ski, sled their way to the South Pole. With one big push, they could be that in a single day. Instead, it took three days. Why? from the very start of their journey, Amundson had insisted that his party advance exactly 15 miles each day, no more no less. The final leg would be no different. Rain or shine, Amundson would not allow the daily 15 miles to be exceeded. While Scott allowed his team to rest only on the days when it froze and pushed his team to the point of inhuman exertion on the days when it thought. Amundson insisted on plenty of rest and kept a steady pace for the duration of the trip to the South Pole.

There's one simple difference between their approaches can explain why Amazon's team made it to the top, while Scott's team perished. Setting a steady, consistent, sustainable pace was ultimately what allowed the party from Norway to reach their destination. And this is the phrase they use by the way, “To reach their destination without particular effort.” What an absurdity, without particular effort. It’s this thing that escaped people for millennia. Just impossible goal, but that's how it seemed to them. Amundson led his team to victory. They were there. They were there first. As it turns out, about 30 days before Scott's team arrives, they're demoralized, they're exhausted. Their approach has exhausted them. So they haven't achieved the goal. And they're burned out. And so much so that on their way home, they're already in such an exhausted state, that they're making poor choices when it comes to the way they approach their action. And they die on the way home. They die. They never make it home rather. And so one team is victorious, makes it home alive. Thrives through the experience, the other doesn't.

The idea behind that story, and what I found the research to support it almost universally, is that there is this false economy of powering through. What we want to do is find a pace that feels, if not effortless, just doable, and to do less than you feel like doing. So whether that's something as small as keeping a journal where you say, “Okay, well, not less than one sentence, but not more than five a day. I did that 10 years ago. And this is literally true. I have not missed a day, I mean, not to my recollection, in 10 years now, because there was an upper bound that helped you go for consistency, for sustainability. But it can be true for anything. I mean, sales numbers. A salesperson can say, “Okay, I'm never going to make less than five calls a day. But I'm also not going to ever make more than 10.” So that on the good days you don't burn yourself out. So that on the bad days, when you don't feel like it, you've got nothing left in the tank. You want the consistency of effort, the sustainability.

I mean, well, me writing the book is a personal example. You want to get the book done. You could have never less than 500 words in a day, but also never more than a thousand. You keep yourself within a range is actually a far superior strategy for high-performance than going big, getting exhausted getting burned out, or just even to the point where you don't want to do it. You're not really burned out. But it doesn't sound good to do it day two, three, and four, because you already put in a bit too much right out of the gate. So I think this idea of pace. There's a military phrase, which is that slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

[00:34:25] MB: Yeah, I love that phrase. And that's something I think about a lot actually. I find it so interesting that the story was very powerful. And this notion of doing less than you feel like doing or doing an amount of effort that almost feels effortless. How do you battle against the guilt and the self-talk around that level of activity?

[00:34:54] GM: Well, I think that there's a very unpleasant path when you’re doing nothing about something that's really important. That so called lazy path is actually extremely effortful. Or it can be because of exactly what you just said. The guilt of going, “There is something that really matters. It's essential, and I'm not doing it. I am procrastinating it. I am burned out from it. I can barely even think about it. I will immediately distract myself onto social media to numb the pain of not doing the thing I need to do. I'm just going to binge watch that movie to escape this thing.” So this so called – The lazy part is not really the effortless path. But nor is being such a perfectionist about something that you really don't take action, or that you’re never satisfied. So you never get the project done.

I had an interesting experience when I was working with my son set a goal. He’s 12 years old. Sets a goal for have his Eagle Scout by the time he turns 14, which is an aggressive goal. Again, you can use any kind of goal that you set in the same logic. And it actually went quite smoothly for almost that full two years. I mean, he had done all the requirements. We just kept plodding along on it. Kept coming back to what we need to do. Even finished the final project. For those familiar with it, you have a big eagle project at the end. It's a service project. He had 40 people come and help him so that in one day, he was able to put up this huge 180-foot fence. Put it in paint, everything, because – So that, in a sense was a kind of a little effortless of story. Just having enough people unified and helping. It was a really enjoyable experience.

Then there's this final little thing. I say little thing. It's not always little. You have to write up the report. And I personally know of somebody who had done everything but that final report and procrastinated it till they were a week past, or a day pass maybe, their 18th birthday. And they tried to hand it in. And there're just absolutely sticklers on this. If you're a day late, it is done. There's nothing you can do about it. And so he never got his eagle because of this.

So this thing is like a real problem. And so here he is. He's like a few weeks before turning 14, but there's this project not getting done. And we've seen people who had done amazing, gorgeous, expensive, wood-chiseled literally reports and like incredible things, impressive. And the thought of anything like that just was overwhelming enough that we didn't do anything. So we weren't working hard, and yet it felt hard. Every time you think about it, “Oh, that's – Oh, yeah. That's something.” Both of us. We just couldn't get any action. And so we just did a couple of things to make the action more doable, more effortless. We say, “Okay, what does done look like for us?” Even that question, “What does done look like?” And we said, “Okay. Well, the minimum standard of acceptability is that there will be a three-ring binder with some photos, with some words written on them explaining what they are. A little essay. What's the minimum the essay needs to be. And it's handed off at the office and they have rubber stamped it.” Okay, well, that is completion. We don’t have to – All these things we thought we had to do. All these bells and whistles we've seen lots of other people do. We don't have to do any of that. Well, that's relieving right there. You don't have to do the second mile. You got to do the first mile. Okay, what's the first physical obvious step? What's the first obvious step? Let's not worry about the 1,000th step or the 10th step. What's the first physical thing we can do? We're going to find a three-ring binder. Open it Well, we can do that. That first step is doable. And so we do the tiny first step. And then what's the next physical step? Well, we've got to get some inserts. Can we them? We can drive and get them. And we just did this in what I now refer to as microbursts.

A friend of mine, I love that term, 10 minutes. What can we do in 10 minutes? And so in 10-minute little bursts, we would take the next physical step. And so then, of course, you have the enjoyment of actually making progress. And in this approach, we actually got it over the line. The thing was done. And one week before his 14th birthday, he had the Eagle Scout, He’d achieved this great goal, this great achievement, but not by forcing it, not by being a perfectionist, not by overdoing, or overthinking, but by doing streamlining, doing the simplest path possible to actually achieving the objective. And I think that that is analogous to many different projects we take on that we over engineer, overthink, overdue, and therefore under-deliver.

[00:39:44] MB: I love this idea of 10-minute microbursts. And it makes me think of one of my favorite phrases about tackling any big project is just, from a mentor of mine, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, right? And it's the same idea. It’s just start with the smallest thing and just do that thing. And then do the next thing. And that consistently over a period of time is how you create these results.

[00:40:12] GM: Yeah. I mean, I remember Netflix is this – I mean, I don't know what the number is exactly today. But last time I was researching, it's gone up to 180 plus million households worldwide. It's just tremendous business success. But it might not have even existed at all if it weren't for Reed Hastings, who was charged $40 by his local blockbuster for losing a VHS tape, the Tom Hanks movie, Apollo 13, if I'm remembering right.

And so what do you do? He had this vision of downloaded video of all this years and years in the future. He does have a glimpse of what it could be. But the technology that he's envisioning does not even exist. It's not even plausible. And he could have got so consumed with that as to just sort of theorize for it for years and just not do anything. But what he literally did, it was him and his colleagues. Literally, the first thing they did is they took a DVD and they just went to the local post office and FedEx area, and they just mailed themselves a single CD. And that was it. That is what they did. They didn't make a big business plan. They just said, “What's the first physical step? The first obvious step I can take?” And that was what it was. Mail ourselves a CD. See if that will be delivered and without damaging the CD. And they did. And it worked. And that was the beginning.

And so this idea, we know about the idea of minimum viable product, but I think in practice of effortless action is minimum viable action, where we just literally can actually identify these two things. We say, “Okay, what is the first obvious action? We wanted to get the clutter out of the garage a little while ago. It’s overwhelming every time I see it, “Oh, such a mess.” And what’s the first thing we can do? Okay, well, we can find the broom. That is the first thing we can do. Nothing else matters. So you find the broom. Okay, we find the broom. What can you do if you have more than that tiny mess? Now what’s the first microburst you can take? Well, sweep out the shed so that we can move the bikes in there. That's what we can do. It's a microburst. And as soon as we identified that, as soon as we’ve taken that moment, suddenly, it wasn't so overwhelming. We weren't going to procrastinate it so easily. Because you can find a boom, that's possible, and you can sweep out the shed so that you can put the bikes in there and free up space in the garage. And that's been done now. But I actually don't think it would have happened if it weren't for this idea of next obvious action, the tiny thing and.

And some of the science that you liked behind this is that, in recent years, neuroscientists and psychologists have done experiments to try to measure now the experience that we’re having when we experience now. Normally, it's a very philosophical idea, but what they've concluded is about two and a half seconds. That's our psychological present. And one of the implications of that is that progress can happen in these absolutely tiny increments. Two and a half seconds is enough time to put the phone down, to close the browser, to take a deep breath. It's enough time to open a book. Take out a blank sheet of paper, or lace a running shoes. Open the junk drawer and fish out the tape measure. Two and a half seconds is enough time a course to also get caught up in the non-essential activities too. And I think big tech companies really understand that. And there's a relentless competition for our attention. They're constantly offering smaller units of information, 280 characters on Twitter, like some Facebook, Instagram, news feeds. You can scroll through, absorb at a glance. All these, these bite-sized activities, they might not feel like wasting time. After all, they’re just a few seconds. But the trouble, of course, is that over time these activities rarely add up to making progress on the goals that really mattered to us. They're easy, but pointless.

Coming back to the good news here is suddenly taking control of that. I will take control of the next two and a half seconds. I'm going to use that to shift. What can I do in a heartbeat? What's the first obvious action I can take in a heartbeat to make progress? I can open the document for the article I need to write. I can pick up my phone to call the potential investor. Like it’s very powerful, I think, when you start to discover, “Yeah, I don't have to take on everything. I can just take responsibility for the next two and a half seconds.”

[00:45:06] MB: I love that. And it's very empowering even to just think about two and a half seconds. Do that. Redirect yourself. And it reminds me too of something that a friend of mine, Mark Manson, calls the do something principle. Coming back to your earlier analogy of cleaning out your shed, the idea is that counter-intuitively action actually creates momentum and motivation. We always think we need to get motivated and then act. But oftentimes, we need to act to create motivation. And it creates this snowball where I was cleaning out a drawer the other day and I said, “You know what?” I'm just going to throw one thing away from this drawer.” And I threw one thing away. And then 20 minutes later, I had the whole drawer out on the desk. I was reorganizing everything. And if I hadn't thrown that one thing away, I would have just said, “Oh, it's too much. I can't do it right now.”

[00:45:55] GM: Yeah, I'm looking right now in the office for the name of a book that I really like on this. It’s called Goodbye Things. And I love the contrast with that. And another book, that I like both of them, but Marie Kondo’s book on The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. They're both effectively teaching the same thing. But I know of some people who have felt so overwhelmed by the idea of Marie Kondo, like you got to tidy everything. It won’t go over a six-month period. It just is too much. And one of the principles in Goodbye Things is he has a principle, he says discard of one item right now.

And without fail, when I recall that principle, like when I share it just like I am with you, I literally just feel this burst of energy to do it. I don't think I've ever done it where I haven't discarded something, because it's so tangible and immediate. And I can do that. And that's one of the signs that you're moving into the space of effortless action. I can do that. You've reduced it to something small enough, concrete enough, real enough, right here enough. You can feel. It's like you can see how these two ideas start to connect, the effortless state and then effortless action. It's like, yeah, you can feel in your body, “I can do that. I'm going to do that.” You don't need to be motivated by any external source or anything. I'm doing it. That thing is real. And I feel it. That's the connection, I would say, between effortless state and effortless action.

But the thing I am most excited about in the research and work into effortless is this final section of effortless results. This is the game changer. And for me, it's game changing in a slightly painful way, because I suddenly discover how little I was doing a bit in the past, and how going forward, how big of a change I need to make and I’m making.

Here's the distinction between effortless action and effortless results. Effortless action is making it as easy as possible to get a result one time, right? That's like getting my son the Eagle Scout. He's not going to do that twice. I don't have to worry about it 10 times. I have one son. This is it. And you want to streamline that process as much as possible to be able to get that action done. But effortless results, what I mean by that is the difference between linear results and residual results, right? A person who decides to exercise for an hour today, but tomorrow has to decide again whether to exercise or not. They've made a linear decision. An entrepreneur who makes money only when he or she is actively working to make it, they have a linear business. You do it once, you get paid once. A father who has to remind his children to do the same chore every day is practicing linear parenting, and so on. I mean, linear results are good, but they're so limited, that they can never exceed the effort exerted.

And I think for a lot of people, they don't know that they're making that choice deliberately. They don't know that there's a different alternative. They're not choosing, “Oh, I just want linear results. That's what I want.” They just don't even think about there being residual results.” They're completely different. Residual results, you exert the effort once and reap the benefit again and again, results that flow to you. Whether you put the additional effort in or not, results flow to you while you're sleeping quite literally, while you're taking the day off. And then they can be virtually infinite.

I mean, I do have one pretty solid experience where I have experienced this, is if you write a book, and then you get the royalties from that book again and again, and it's also the impact of it, that people still, every day, literally, are reaching out since I wrote Essentialism. This has impacted my life. There’s residual impact. Can you come and speak at this event? Could you do this thing? Could you be involved in this opportunity? Literally, while I'm sleeping, these things are happening every day because of a one-time effort to create something and put it out to the world. So I've seen it in a positive way. But there's so many other ways, right? I mean, a student who learns the deep principles, rather than just what they need to pass the test can use that understanding again and again. They have residual knowledge. A person who makes a one-time decision to exercise every day at a set time and they build a routine and a support system around it, they build it once. They made a residual decision that comes back to them again and again. An entrepreneur sets up a business to work even when they're on vacation for six months, literal example from somebody that I worked with, has a residual business. And so it goes on. A social entrepreneur who provides microloans that are repaid so that they can be loaned out again and again is making a residual contribution. And actually, that's exactly what happened to a friend of mine, and also something that I write about in Effortless, is Jessica Jackley, who is doing voluntary service in East Africa. She meets a local fishmonger, Catherine. There’s this great demand for fish from Catherine's village. Each day, she purchases about half dozen fish from the middleman and resells them at a roadside stand. She has seven children to feed. She wishes she could buy directly from the fisherman and keep more profit. But to do that, she would have to travel over 100 kilometers. She can't afford the bus fare. And that's the issue. So she has to be able to get that to negotiate. She can't afford either the bus fare or being able to not be at market that day. She's literally in a linear business. She's got just enough to just keep repeating the effort to get the same results.

And so inspired by Muhammad Yunus at the Grameen Bank, and a few other things that have gone on at the time, Jessica co founds the platform Kiva. It’s a crowdsourcing platform. Allows anyone to loan money in any amount to entrepreneurs in developing countries, but the returns don't just stop there. When the loan is paid back, and by the way, it's something like 98% of them are, it's repaid in the form of Kiva credit. So it allows that same money to be re-loaned as capital to another entrepreneur. And the cycle can and often does continue indefinitely. So one-time investment actually becomes a perpetual fund that supports more and more entrepreneurs for decades to come.

Instead of giving, I mean, she could have I suppose given $500, right? Jessica could have given $500 to Catherine. You make an impact. There's nothing small about that. That impact would have gone on in some ways perpetually as well. Bless the family, blessed people after. There's nothing weak about that. That's good. But surely, it's even better if you can take that money and build a microloan system that – And then a platform from it. I mean, this has been distributed now. Kiva has distributed like $1.3 billion dollars in loans. With $500 a 1.3 billion, I mean, that's the difference between linear and residual results. And to me, that is the idea that I have most been like head slapping about. Like how many times have I invested in something that will give me a one-time return, however good I think that return is? Versus putting effort into things that will give 10 times, 100 times, or even in some cases, in perpetuity results. So that is really the sort of the crescendo of effortless is where you get past the one-time effort, one-time results, and into this idea of residual in perpetuity results.

[00:53:59] MB: Such a powerful mental model. And even just framing that question, that concept of how can I find investments? And it could be investment of time, effort, energy, money, whatever infrastructure that is going to keep giving me a return over and over again. Are there things in your life that will create a residual impact and a residual effect and almost using that as a filter or a framing mechanism? Thinking through your life, I mean, I'm already trying to think about what are some areas of my life where I could make these effortless decisions that would cascade through and create more time savings, efficiency, whatever the savings or the benefit may be? It's a really great frame to use an approach.

[00:54:47] GM: Yeah, I find it fascinating myself. You know, what can you automate? What can you build? One of the reasons that I built this, maybe this feels a bit self-serving to even share this, but after writing this, after researching it, and just sort of seeing how the ratio in my own entrepreneurial endeavors how much was in linear work, and how little in residual. I thought, it's just time to build an online academy. You build it once. Yes, you maybe have to keep building and extending to make it better and better. That's enjoyable. You build it once. It lives on. Five years from now it lives, 10 years. I mean, at least in theory, it can last 100 years. Literally built it, essentialism.com, it exists now, The Essentialism Academy. And we're just going to keep building it. Actually, people can access the 21-Day Challenge, and they can buy that at any time. But right now, if they order effortless, then they can get access to that first course for free.

One of the main reasons was this idea of effortless results and saying, “Look, build it once. Look at the difference.” This is like new math. The numbers are so different in terms of whichever you care about. And I think both matter, whether it's residual impact, whether it's residual, just renewable financial model, building an institute. The alternative is to fly around the world, as I have, and enjoy doing. Giving keynotes at large conferences. And you feel good doing it. I've always enjoyed that. I love to teach. And I like that there's a business model that has actually has become relatively effortless. The whole thing just works. But it was much more like effortless action and what we've been talking about there, streamlined process, end-to-end. From the time somebody wants that to happen to the time it's completed, the whole thing has been streamlined. Makes it very smooth experience for me and clients as well. The thing works. Yeah, but when you're done, it's just done. One-time, and you're over, and then you need to start again.

And to contrast that – So anyway, I mean, I'm trying to live this now, lead this way. I think one more illustration, one thing I personally have learned. There’s as a whole chapter on this too, is just the importance of building high-trust teams, where if you can build at once, those teams can operate smoothly for a long period of time, even including, a long time for me, but even including the death of that found, that entrepreneur, right? It can outlive them. Apple is easily three times the size that it was when Steve Jobs died now. He said, in fact, that his favorite invention, people said, “What's your favorite innovation? Is it the iPhone? Is it the iPad? Is it the Mac? What is it?” And he said, “No. It's Apple.” He thought about that differently.

I've been able to do work with Apple University, and to sort of see the background in thinking behind why that was established, why it was built. And it was to try and make sure that people understood how decisions have been made. Why they were made? So that whatever the future was, all these future challenges, all these technical issues, all these new competitors that would come, that they wouldn't try and copy the past. It wouldn't be limited by that. But they would understand the principles and the dynamics involved in making those decisions so that they could be better informed in their own wrestling with new challenges, unforeseeable challenges.

I mean, think of that, how what mindset Steve had to have in order to create both Apple University or, indeed, to think of how vitally important it was in his mind to create the organism that could outlive him. I think that the reason he did that was because he'd had the experience the first time around where he gets fired from his own company and he just goes, “Oh, I did not do this thoughtfully enough. I focused on the product, rather than the thing that can create the product a hundred times.” And he leaves. He goes 10 years. He's at Pixar. He starts NeXT, then he builds Pixar, or helps to build it. They actually don't really let him do that much. But what he does do is he learns from them. How team can operate? How you can make decisions in a collective way?

And by the time he gets invited back to Apple, he is simply a different type of leader and he understands how to build things, how to build the system that can build things better than he did before. He understood the leadership dynamic that he saw at Pixar. He understood by this – By the way, if you want to deep dive into this, it's a great book called Becoming Steve Jobs that fewer people have read, but is really the best biography about Steve Jobs and the journey he went on in this 10 years. So he turns back up at Apple, a different leader. He’s much more focused not just on, “Hey, I'm going to do this great thing. But I'm going to try and build a thing that can build many great things.” That is such a different orientation. And you watch some of the things that have been done since. And we can argue about various elements of Apple’s choices since then. But when I see like Apple Park be created, actually built, delivered, the whole construction of that entire project, not the design of it, which Steve still had his thumbprint on. But the whole execution of that is he's not even there. That's unbelievable. That wasn't by default. That is by design. And I think it was seeing through this kind of residual results, “How do I build something to build stuff?” That is another – To me, that's a 10X mindset, rather than trying to work 10X as hard.

[01:00:49] MB: So for somebody that wants to start to make their life more effortless, what is one micro action or microburst that you would give them to start implementing this in some form or fashion in their lives?

[01:01:06] GM: I actually think one place someone can start is what I would call a done for today list. Instead of having a to do list, which, almost without fail, is endless, often longer than at the end of the day than it is at the beginning no matter how productive you were or how many things you crossed-off the list. But that you have an unnatural end of the day. That you say, “At the beginning of the day, what are the things that if I get them done I will be able to be satisfied and say, “Okay, that's enough for today.” You have some list, very long lists, you could do like everything on them and still not feel satisfied. So the list isn't even right. But if you ask this question, “What is my done for today list?” and you try and select things. Sometimes it maybe it's three things, really important things, things that matter. And you identify those and you say, “Okay, if I'm done with those, I'm done.” No more sneaky work after that. No more jumping on Amazon and ordering things in the middle of watching a show or talking with my significant other. You’re done for the day. You actually have an upper bound for your day. This way it helps you to not be in this endless mode of like Zoom, eat, sleep, repeat. It's five o'clock, it’s six o'clock, it’s seven o'clock, and it just goes on and on. There's no end. There's no boundary. Your Fitbit at the end of the day, it's 300 steps. We don't want that life. Success needs to feel better than that.

And so I think one concrete thing, it starts to get us out of the mode of I’ll solve everything through longer hours or more intensity. You say, “Look, I'm going to have an upper bound.” So you better select carefully, and then feel like, yeah, we're done now. It's okay for today. Because we don't want to use up more energy and resource within us than we can recharge within this same 24 hour period. And I think the done for the day list is one practical way to start that journey.

[01:03:15] MB: And where can listeners find you, your podcast and Effortless online?

[01:03:24] GM: Effortless is everywhere the books are. I hope people find it an antidote to some of the feeling on the edge of exhaustion that I think a lot of people are feeling right now. The What’s Essential Central podcast is just a joy to be a part of right now. And if people find anything in this conversation relevant, I think they'll enjoy that. So go and subscribe right now. You're already on a podcast. So you know where to do it, how to do it? What's Essential podcast with Greg McKeown. And then I would just say essentialism.com. Come and be a part of this ongoing learning institute where you can really – I mean, I would say, is either the best or even only place that people can learn how to do what matters most, but as effortlessly as possible.

[01:04:10] MB: Well, Greg, thank you so much for coming back on the show and sharing so many powerful stories and great insights about how we can be more effortless.

[01:04:20] GM: Matt, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

[01:04:22] MB: I hope you're still listening to the podcast, because the last 20 minutes of this episode are a phenomenal off the record conversation that Greg and I had. He started asking me questions, and we just started chatting once the interview was over. And fortunately, I left the mic recording. And we had a very candid, very frank conversation about really how to spend time and not feel guilty about spending time on the things that matter the most in your life.

And we also talked about how to deal with video games and managing how to allocate how much time you want to spend, whether it's playing video games or doing anything in your life that isn't work, but it's something that you care about. And this conversation was very impactful for me personally. And midway through, Greg basically asked me if I was still recording and recommended that we include it in the interview. So with that, I really hope you enjoy the last 20 minutes or so this conversation. This to me was the absolutely most interesting part of this interview with Greg.

[01:05:26] GM: Did you find it interesting? This is all off the record, but it's like, are you intrigued by effortless? Do you feel there's something to it? I'm asking you a genuine opinion?

[01:05:33] MB: Yeah. No, I mean, the thing to me that I'm most curious about, and I think I said this in the interview, is like I genuinely struggle. Like I'm 100% a subscriber of the school of thought of like do a little bit every day. But where it breaks down for me, like I'm very good at just doing a little bit every day of, if I have a goal, I will just knock out an hour or two or like a key – I do like most important tasks and 80/20 and all that. I'll do all that stuff. But like, I will consistently execute every single day. Where I think I reach like a question mark or frustration point just personally, and we talked about it too, but it's like – So, okay, I have a goal. And I want to achieve something. I haven't achieved it yet. If I just do more of what I've – Instead of doing the two hours today and two hours tomorrow and two hours on Friday, what if I did four hours today, and four hours tomorrow, four hours on Friday, or whatever? Do I get there faster? And am I shortchanging myself by doing that? And then there's this whole spiral of like guilt, and dissatisfaction, and the feeling like I always need to be working harder. And like that to me is like that emotional struggle is where, really, the rubber meets the road on how do I – Like if I have two hours kind of gap on my calendar and I say, “Okay, do I want to like relax and listen to a podcast, or read, or fire up some video games or something, or do I want to – Or go spend time with my kids? Or do I want to just grind out five more like emails?

[01:07:09] GM: The way you said that, Matt, was funny though, because here's how I heard what you said. And you could correct me. You said lots of words, but what I really heard was, “Do I play video games or do I go and try and do something?”

[01:07:21] MB: That's 100% accurate? You heard it correct.

[01:07:24] GM: Because the way you said play with my kids was such an afterthought. I was like – It's not that you never do it, Matt. I am being so judgmental. It could be nothing. It could be nothing of a pause. But I'm like the real thing that you're feeling pulled to. You don't feel guilty if you go play with your kids.

[01:07:45] MB: That's true.

[01:07:46] GM: You're never going, “Oh my god. I can’t believe I am playing with my kids, spending time with them. I should be –” No. You feel guilty if you're on a video game.

[01:07:54] MB: That's accurate.

[01:07:56] GM: And that to me was what I heard underneath all those different examples. So that's why I was laughing.

[01:08:01] MB: No. You read tea leaves perfectly on that. I won't lie to you. You nailed it.

[01:08:05] GM: Yeah. By the way, somebody just give feedback. Somebody has listened to like every episode podcasts I actually know. And I've done work for their company. And they gave feedback to my system that they said, “When you're on your podcast, and you do this listening thing, and you go – You’ll say, “The way you said that word, I think what you meant was this,” right? Like as part of my listening thing. And he's like, “Man, it's like –” He just thought it was literally like reading the tea leaves. He's think it comes across like a circus trick.

[01:08:30] MB: That was impressive.

[01:08:30] GM: I'm like, “Yeah, but do you notice they say that that's what they meant?” Because that's an important part of – It's not a trick. It's like you’re actually listening. Anyway, that's what my next books about. So that's really the question for you. It sounds to me, and it wouldn't be that I'm making up a story now. But it wouldn't surprise me especially since COVID that there's just a higher percentage of video gaming that the worst before. I don't know what the rate was before. But I would just imagine that there is some more now than then. Is that right?

[01:09:03] MB: I would say during periods of COVID, yes. I would say over the last probably three or four months, no. I mean, December I kind of let myself have more of like a chill month. But then January, I really kind of kicked it into gear. And I've been pretty proactive.

[01:09:19] GM: Is gaming for you a source of relaxation?

[01:09:24] MB: Yeah. To me, I view it as like a source of flow, a source of like enjoyment. Like that's the other thing I struggle with is like I genuinely enjoy playing video games. To me, it's something like my life without that, I just don't think I would like – Some parts of me say I should just never play them again and like find other sources of enrichment enjoyment. But part of me is like, “Well, that's really a part of something that I like doing. And I want to integrate it into my life.” And I struggle with the guilt around that too.

[01:09:53] GM: Because what the presumption is and probably from other people specifically in your sphere is that it’s always a waste of time, that there's no positive gaming.

[01:10:06] MB: And I would say maybe not for my direct sphere, but definitely from like certain –

[01:10:10] GM: Broader culture.

[01:10:11] MB: Yeah, a culture and even like some intellectual influences. You know what I mean? Like not that they shaped my thinking. I mean I would say you've shaped it probably more than this. But like the Grant Cardones of the world, and those kinds of people that are always like, “Oh, you should do more, be more.” I mean, it's like, “Well, I could start a nonprofit and spend the time doing that instead. It's like that’s the stuff I wrestle with.

[01:10:34] GM: You’re, “Is it ever okay to be gaming?” Is there ever guilt-free gaming?

[01:10:40] MB: I would say, yeah, there is, for sure.

[01:10:44] GM: There could be. I'm asking like a rhetorical question that you're asking. It’s like, “Oh, but should I always be guilty if I'm ever gaming?” So Grant Cardone would be saying yes.

[01:10:55] MB: He probably would. Yeah, that's fair.

[01:10:57] GM: You’re wasting your time. Stop with the gaming 100%. Let's get to hustle. I think my question for you, and this is a sort of normal distribution curve question, is where is it satisfying? And where is it guilt producing? Is it satisfying for 10 minutes? Half an hour? Hour? Two hours? Like at some point – It's my hypothesis, is at some point, this is not satisfying anymore. It's not relaxing anymore, because you do start to feel this isn't the best use of me right now.

[01:11:32] MB: Yep. Yeah, that's a really good insight.

[01:11:35] GM: I think I'm not universally negative about gaming. I don't game myself. But I'm sure there are some gaming that just so itself negative, violent, selfish-oriented, that it I think even any time on it is likely to feel off even if it's something people get into habits with. But I'm sure that there is some that you go, “This is just enough intellectually stimulating. It's just enough interesting. It's just enough relaxing, that it actually is a benefit. It's almost meditative. I can just release my mind from the tension of all the projects and all the other things and all the other responsibilities and just be in this moment. And be, as you use the word, in flow, that there's something releasing about that. You might need to pay attention to this going forward. But just your guess, what's that tipping point? Where is it still useful? What amount of time before it starts to be guilt?

[01:12:31] MB: I view it and to timescales. So I view it on what I would say on a daily basis and on a weekly basis. I think daily, and maybe even within a day, this might change. But I would say like maybe on a day, like 45 minutes to an hour. I think I never have like a feeling of like fatigue or wasting time. It’s just kind of fun, flow, whatever. I'd say once you're creeping into like two or three hours, it starts to get that feeling. And then on a weekly basis, there's actually some research around specifically video games and like video game addiction and stuff. And they basically say that the threshold is like 20 hours a week. That's like if you exceed 20 hours a week, it starts to get into like addiction territory. I try to target definitely less than that. I would say probably 10 to 15 hours a week, something like that, which again is maybe an hour, hour and a half a day. Like maybe some time on weekends, or I'll stay up one night and play a little bit when my wife and all my kids and everybody's asleep and have some time to myself. But I say that those are the timescales that I typically think about it. So probably 30-minute to hour and a half during a single day, and then maybe like 10 to 15 hours in a week.

[01:13:43] GM: I think a type of time/emotional log is a good idea for you for one week to just write down. It's not judgment. You're not beating yourself up. You're not defending yourself. It's just the data. When do I go on? How long did I go on? And how much did I enjoy it? Like an enjoyment chart.

[01:14:07] MB: Yeah, I like that. Maybe you have something. Maybe you do it. It could be a bit of a hassle. But maybe you wouldn't do this for a whole week. But you could do it for a couple of times when you're doing it. Every 15 minutes you just have to say on a scale of one to 10 how much you're enjoying it. And just learn about your own cycle. I mean, you've already told me that if it's between two and three hours, you don't feel good about that. So you've already observed that. So I think from your own thing, your own data, you should be saying, “I'm never doing more than two hours.”

I'm going to guess that actually that number is really like closer to 90 minutes. That actually, that the satisfaction you're getting that you're reaching diminishing returns at around 90 minutes. And on like weekend to anything, like I just think that's probably what it is. And I think by the time you're at two hours, it's actually probably a negative return. Meaning, overall, you are getting less out of it for every minute you spend that total. You are reducing the entire experience down.

So now the question is optimizing even within that. Is it 90 minutes? Is it actually something else? If I go out there for 45 minutes, or I go to where it is in 45 minutes, I just completely focused on this and just get to enjoy this and just let everything else leave me. That's actually my optimal amount. Like I think it's a little experimentation and a little gathering of some data with this so that you don't feel this guilt, this almost shame that I think we can feel about like, “Oh, yeah, I just did not use that well.” And you can stop stripping away that negative externality, the unintended consequence of this sometimes genuinely helpful buffer experience in your life.

[01:15:52] MB: Yeah, that's a really good insight. I like that kind of methodology. I think those are really, really powerful insight and way to approach it. And I like kind of checking in. I mean, even just without that exercise, there's a video game I used to play that I quit, because I basically kept having this experience being like, “I'm just not enjoying this game that much.” And I was playing it because my friends were playing it. But I just said, “My moment to moment experience of this is not enjoyable. I'm going to stop playing it.”

[01:16:18] GM: Did you stop recording? Tell me it's still going.

[01:16:21] MB: It's still going. And I'm going to re-listen to this for sure.

[01:16:24] GM: Well, I think it might make a better part of the episode too. So obviously not me asking that. But I think this is like the most real it's been. And I think it might be the most relevant for your audience too given the age of the audience you have and so on, and majority male. Everybody's dealing with what you're talking about right now.

[01:16:40] MB: Yeah. I like that. Maybe we'll even release it as like a bonus.

[01:16:45] GM: Yeah, I think there's something here. Because, I mean, here we are using the same principles, diminishing returns, negative returns, but we're dealing with something really real. And I think it's helpful, because, I mean, I know with my son. I mean, right? So stereotypically, social media is girls, gaming is boys. And with my own children, I do see that. And in both instances, to simply say it's bad doesn't seem to quite – Isn't very helpful for a start. It’s not helpful. We saying our children as they become adults in a world that they've only haven't had social media in which their job is going to require using social media, being familiar with it, that marketing is on there, that understanding what's going on in the world is happening there. That, no, you should just never be involved in it. It just doesn't feel authentic, sensible conversation. You can't put this genie back in this bottle.

And same for gaming. My son loves gaming. He does. The question is how can we work together helping him and us find the right amount of the right things at the right level of sociality so that maybe it's only when somebody else is on there with him so that there's an element of sociality existing in it? That there's a certain amount of time through the week, maybe it's an X amount of the weekend, it's X amount. And that we find this optimal place. We all like entertainment of some kind. And it's important for all of us to have some entertainment and relax, all of us. And that's been true for millennia, whether it was theater, whether it was playing games together. So it's part of the mix.

And I think the question mostly I have for you is question I heard Gordon B. Hinckley, who's actually President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but he’s most amazing leader. He’s passed away years ago now. But I remember listening to a talk by him. And he asked this question. It was specifically to men and boys. And he just said, is the percentage of our lives that we're spending on? And I think he was actually talking about the big game being on ESPN and so on. Like is that the right percentage? Maybe even said like, “I enjoy a great game as much as the next person, but is the percentage of my life that I'm spending on it the right amount? And I think that's the right question here. It's not forget games, forget gaming, 100% out. It's find that optimal amount so that you can find satisfaction without the guilt. And you optimize so that you cannot feel controlled by it, but that you control the situation. Has that all sound?

[01:19:31] MB: Yeah. No, I love that framework. And I think the other piece that – I mean, you just touched on it, but you touched on earlier too is this notion that like if you almost come to this piece or internal metric of like here's the amount that I think is the right amount, then you can enjoy that experience fully without any sort of guilt, or shame, or whatever else attached to it, and be more present to it as opposed to checking your email every five minutes and being distracted and feeling like you shouldn't be doing it and all of that stuff.

[01:20:04] GM: Yeah, I don't know that you'll have ever done it, because it seems like a weird thing to do maybe. But to actually time block not just the other things in your life, but gaming as well.

[01:20:14] MB: Yep. I think that's almost like the end result of it in some form or fashion is just have it be essentially time block and say, “Hey, this is my time for enjoyment, flow, entertainment, whatever it is. And I'm going to come to peace with what I think the right amount is in advance and after doing some thinking through it, and then I'm going to test that out and see, “Hey, is this working? Is it not working? Maybe I'll iterate on it a little bit.” But then you almost have that experience. And it's just as sacred as a meeting or whatever else, and you can really be present to it, as opposed to being half distracted by it.

[01:20:49] GM: That's exactly right. And it helps to be able to go, “I'm going to enjoy this when it comes.” And I'm going to – It's like eating dessert. And the whole time, “Oh, I shouldn't be eating the dessert.” Even enjoying the experience, you still get the calories without the enjoyment. I think there's something to be said for that with this as well, where you always feel like, “Oh, somebody's going to walk in. And why are you doing –” Enjoy it. Time block it. When you're doing gaming, you're just going to do gaming. When you're working, you're just going to work. When you're with your children, you're just going to be with your children. I think that time blocking, however sort of basic of a tactic it is, is one that frankly I have come back to recently as like, “Man, my life will be better as I do more time blocking.

I had Nir Eyal of Indistractible and Hooked on the podcast. And he's actually a classmate of mine and –

[01:21:41] MB: Former guest on our show too.

[01:21:43] GM: Well, and he's great. But he was really emphasizing this time blocking again as being a way to be in distractible. And I was like, “Yep, I think that's right. I need to upgrade on that right now. Invest a bit more in it.” I'm not all resolved on it now. I don't think you ever fully resolve, “Oh, now you've time blocked your whole life.” But every time biking I've done since then has been better for me, better for my wife and better for the children. And we just are going to keep doing it, because it's so much more satisfying to know, “This is a window for this thing.” And when you're not doing it, you become more aware of that as well, “Wow, I’m just literally to write a New York Times article, and I need to write, and I haven't written it this week.” I keep putting on time blocks early in the morning to do it. That's not happening. But instead of it just generally, “Oh, I've got to get to that.” You actually have a time block, because you have to reschedule, “Well, that two hours needs to go somewhere.” And that too gives it I think a greater sense of control. And again, especially in COVID times where everything's got so much more mashed up, where everything bleeds into everything, you never get to fully seem like you're enjoying anything. Dinner, you're doing everything. You're talking with someone. You're also distracted. Working, you're distracted. Like nothing gets to be fully experienced. And that I think is very exhausting to the mind and soul to never really just get to do the thing you're doing. It’s always be feeling I should be doing something else. So this is good, time blocking gaming.

[01:23:15] MB: That's where we’ve landed.

[01:23:16] GM: That’s where we landed.

[01:23:17] MB: After some thorough thinking about what – I love the question. I mean, what's the right percent of my life to spend on it? If it's something I enjoy and something I want to do, what's the right percentage of my life to spend on it?

[01:23:28] GM: Yeah, I love that question too, and I owe that to President Hinckley. Matt, it's been a pleasure.

[01:23:32] MB: Well, Greg, thank you for the extra 45 minutes.

[01:23:36] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you, our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener email.

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