Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

Top positive review

Exactly what I needed!

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

Effortless is the exact message I needed at this moment. More and more often It feels like the only answer is to accomplishing the endless responsibilities we all face is to simply power through - to work harder, longer, with more effort. Effortless offers an alternate path by asking the question, "What if this could be easy?"

It seems simple, but just that tiny shift in thinking has already changed the way I approach my most important tasks - and it really works. The idea that important tasks don't have to be grueling challenged my current thinking. What I love most are the quick, actionable ideas. Today, I've already paired working out with listening to my favorite podcast.

I'm starting a new project this week and instead of being overwhelmed by everything I have to do, I've identified what done looks like and the first action I need to complete.

If you want to make your most important tasks easier - you need to read this book.

397 people found this helpful

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Julie

A waste of time - nothing but cliches

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021

This book is terrible. It's nothing but a bunch of cliches and platitudes strung together. Don't waste your time. I bought it expecting something actionable - instead, it's a bunch of disconnected and oversimplified stories with vague and unusable principles following them.

146 people found this helpful

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Julie

A waste of time - nothing but cliches

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2021

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146 people found this helpful

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Barbermommy

Exactly what I needed!

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

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397 people found this helpful

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Avoid burnout, find an easier path, think positive

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

This book by author Greg Mckeown aims to help reduce the feeling off burnout by focusing on working more efficiently; instead of over-complicating our lives and constantly working harder with minimal success. The book contains 16 chapters divided into three main sections: Effortless State, Effortless Action and Effortless Results. Mckeown uses many analogies and diagrams to explain how to first change your mindset and identify more simple solutions to problems, and then chose the easier path that leaves more time for all of the essential things in your life. Some of the analogies seemed a bit off (that isn't exactly how computers work), which was slightly distracting, but I still understood the points Mckeown was making.

There is a nice summary of the concepts at the end of each section, and honestly if you are looking for a succinct list of actions to take you could just start there. Page 90, for example, lists all of the main ideas of the first five chapters, and in just two pages you get a good idea of what that entire section is about. Now that I've read the entire book, I feel like I could have saved some time by using these summary pages as a guide, and only reading more into the chapters that I felt needed more of an explanation.

It seems like this book could best be summed up by the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” While many of the suggestions and ideas in this book could be helpful reminders of how to use your time more efficiently, it does seem like the author really stretched this premise to try to fill an entire book. Not a terrible book at all, but ironically enough I felt like reading the entire thing wasn't the most efficient use of my time. 3.5 / 5

364 people found this helpful

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Wayne Mullins

Busyness is NOT a badge of Honor

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2021

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We live in a world that never sleeps. There is always something (or someone) vying for our time and attention. But what happens when we simply have no more to give… When we reach the point of burnout?

Do we step back to analyze and evaluate what needs to change? Or do we (like so many others in our society) wear our burnout as a badge of honor, as something to prove our abilities and work ethic?

Before the book really begins - in the Introduction - McKeown points out, “Burnout is not a badge of honor.”

We know this to be true, and yet we still struggle to “fit it all in,” and to out “hustle” the next person. It’s as if we’ve been conditioned to burnout - and then brag about it.

Fortunately, Effortless offers us a chance to reprogram our thinking and challenge our assumptions. McKeown provides a clear roadmap for not only discovering what’s essential, but for ensuring we are doing them in the right way: Effortlessly.

393 people found this helpful

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Rmes

Two winners in a row!

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2021

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It's pretty rare that an author in this genre comes out with one life changing book (Essentialism), and then their second book is *totally different* and also completely transformative. But Greg McKeown has done it again. This book is everything. It is that one long exhale of a breath you've been holding for years.

After a year of trying sooooo hard, I'm left with more work than I could ever complete, and a medical condition caused by the combination of stress and bad posture (I'm literally writing this review from the doctor's office). I've been waiting for this book for months, and it definitely delivered.

Most of these things are ideas that you might have heard somewhere before, but seeing them all codified into a single trajectory is immensely helpful. I used to read Essentialism, his first book, every year or two since it came out -- I will definitely be reading Effortless over and over again as well.

Interestingly: there are some people who write books because they have a detached, breezy mastery of their subject. This is not the case here. You get the sense that this author has struggled and still struggles with everything he talks about. Which I think makes the book incredibly effective, because he's laying out a practical, tested method that he himself has had to use. He's writing from lived experience.

392 people found this helpful

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Denisse

Follow the effortless path

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2021

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This is an incredible book for all ages. If you really want to focus on the things that matter, this book provides you with very practical tools to start implementing it in your every day life. This is must to read. Since the moment I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. I loved every chapter of this book.

278 people found this helpful

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Bruce Worthen

Wish I had read this 30 years ago!

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

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An easy read about how to achieve what is truly essential without having to make unnecessary sacrifices that society seems to feel are required to achieve success. It is packed with examples to help everyone identify with and work towards applying and reaching an effortless state. I especially got a laugh about Swedish death cleaning. I wish my parents had done that to make their passing effortless for the children. We are applying the principle to make our eventual passing and our senior years effortless for us and our children.

274 people found this helpful

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Nothing new

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2021

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I loved "Essentialism" and was so looking forward to this book but it felt like it was put together from paragraph summaries of other popular self-help books. Disappointing.

48 people found this helpful

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edsetiadi

How to do things effortlessly

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2022

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How can we become effortless in what we do? There are so many things covered by this book, but these are the essentials:

Make the most essential activities the easiest ones. Stop filling our head with unnecessary thoughts or needless emotional burdens, clear up the clutter in our head and heart. Make our tasks fun to do. Rest properly and don’t overload ourself or push ourself to burnout. Break our tasks down into several steps and make the first step very easy to do. Set a manageable pace. Start with trash and edit as we progress forward.

Moreover, get rid of unnecessary add-ons. Simplify. Automate functions that can be automated. Have a checklist or a cheat sheet. Seek to understand the principles of things (the why and the how) rather than only the isolated info (the what). Write clear messages that are hard to misinterpret. Leverage trust. Prevent problem before it happens. Define what “done” looks like. Produce residual results. Find ways to make every day a little easier.

McKeown then ends the book with a very moving story that completes it in a full circle, story that inspired him to produce the effortless principles, which prompted him to conclude that “Whatever has happened to you in life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain. However significant those things are. They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do now.”

Indeed, whatever tasks or challenges we have in front of us we can choose to tackle them by overcomplicate things or we can decide to do them effortlessly. The way we respond is still within our control. And this is deep, coming from his own personal experience.

“The Effortless State is an experience many of us have had 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.” McKeown couldn’t summarize it any better. Hope Eve can recover and get back into her old vivacious self.

One person found this helpful

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Lovee

Beautiful! Not Jus Another Business Book

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2021

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I’m speechless! . . . I was thrilled to see that there was another book following on the heels of the life changing Essentialism that I read last year during lockdown. I’m still listening to and applying that one. As soon as I saw that Effortless was to be released, I pre-ordered it. I have been reading it since it arrived on my Kindle. I tried to stretch it and apply it, but I couldn’t put it down.

I gave it five stars because it deserves so much more. In addition to being very well written, it is also very human. It’s popular in business circles, but it’s so much more it’s about life. He explains how to make it easier to do what is essential to us because he has done so. Those who have read Essentialism will not be disappointed. Those who have not will want to read both books more than once. One thing, though, is that the first one has professional narration available with whisper sync. I hope this becomes available for Effortless, because it makes re-reading practically effortless. You will want to read it again. It’s so human! Read the book!

363 people found this helpful

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