Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Greg McKeown: Essentialism & The Pursuit of Less | E121

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Be effortless! In today’s episode, we are talking with Greg McKeown, best-selling author and CEO. Greg’s break-out book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. The book is frequently ranked as a #1 Time Management book on Amazon, and challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success. Greg is the CEO of McKeown Inc. Clients include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!. His writing has appeared or been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month. McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR, NBC, and FOX.  In this episode, we talk about Greg’s path from studying to be a lawyer to becoming a writer, the definition of Essentialism, and how we can decide what’s ‘essential.’ We’ll also discuss the three steps to being effortless, how to make essential work more fun, and how to achieve residual results with your work. If you’re a high-achiever and looking to step up your productivity without dedicating all your time, this is a must-listen!   Sponsored by -    Credit Karma. Go to creditkarma.com/podcast to learn more and find offers tailored just for you.    Olay Body. Fearless In My Skin.   Social Media:   Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on ClubHouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com   Timestamps:   00:37 - Greg’s Upbringing 02:12 - How Greg Strayed From Being a Lawyer and Became a Writer 08:30 - The Definition of Essentialism 09:45 - How Achieving Success Can Cause Failure 12:32 - The Way Essentialism Relates to Being Effortless 15:37 - How We Can Decide What’s Essential 21:17 - Why Greg Wrote Effortless 24:51 - 3 Steps for Being Effortless 29:05 - The Problem With Effort 31:41 - Strategies to Achieve the Effortless State 36:07 - Does Effort Equal Time?  38:19 - How to Make Essential Work See More Fun 42:21 - Ways to Combat Complex Projects and Make It Simple 50:59 - Why Rest is Essential 58:35 - Difference Between Linear and Residual Results 1:04:32 - Greg’s Secret to Profiting in Life   Mentioned in the Episode:   Greg’s Website: https://gregmckeown.com/ The Essentialism Website: https://essentialism.com/ Greg’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregorymckeown?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can find Ole Body Care products in the store or online. Ole Body, Fearless in my skin. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halataha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom

into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhanced and productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship,

and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button, because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with Greg McKeown, CEO and bestselling author of Essentialism, the disciplined pursuit of less, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Essentialism offers actionable advice to avoid the Zoom-Eat Sleep Repeat Loop that we've all become accustomed to.

So you can achieve the best results without burning out. Greg is the CEO of McEwen Incorporated and services clients like Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. He's been published in the New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, and featured on numerous television and radio shows, including NPR, NBC, and Fox. Greg is also an accomplished global public speaker and hosts a podcast called What's Essential, where he interviews thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and celebrities on how to do less, but be better. In this episode, we talk all about Greg's path from studying to be a lawyer to becoming a writer, his definition of essentialism and how we can decide what's truly essential in our lives.

We'll also discuss his three steps to becoming effortless, how to make essential work more fun, and how to achieve residual results with your work. If you're a high achiever, and looking to step up your productivity without dedicating all your precious time, then this is a must-listen episode. Hey Greg, welcome to Young & Profiting Podcast. Oh, it's so great to be with you. Thank you. So looking forward to this conversation. So you are a two-time best-selling author.

You're also a public speaker, a podcast host, you're many things, and we like to start back at your upbringing, your childhood here at Young & Profiting Podcast. So for my understanding, you had a very entrepreneurial spirit. You started a car washing service from when you were a young boy. So talk to us about what it was like growing up for you, what were you like as a child, and tell us about like leading up until college,

like what your life was like. Well, it was a good life. I was born in London, England, but grew up in Leeds, the youngest of five children, great family, not a lot of money. So you know if I wanted to get extra things and I was motivated to do that, I had to figure out a way to do it. And yeah, as you say Carl Washington was my first real business in 4A into that, I was nine years old. But like I didn't just wash a couple of cards, I was for real about this and I learned a lot from that.

Even in all that's followed and all the companies I've worked with and all the entrepreneur adventures that I've advised and been a part of, I still come back to the lessons I learned nine years old, starting that business. Who's your customer, who's your competitor, how can you earn more money, increase your profitability, all those things. That was a formative experience for me for sure. I intended and imagined to stay my whole life in England, but circumstances came up that shifted the direction for that. And where do you live now? Just live north of Malibu in California with Anna, my wife, and our four children, all of them

teenagers now. Lovely. So from my understanding, you are going to be a lawyer, and that's what your parents really wanted for you. But you decided to change paths. So talk to us about what it was like kind of going against your parents' wishes for you to be a lawyer. And what really steered you into the direction of becoming a writer? I was visiting friends in the United States and somebody in passing, it was just an off-the-cuff comment, but he said, well, if you do decide to stay in America, then you should help us with this consultation committee that I was talking to him about. And I left his office and went down.

I remembered distinctly it was dusk and that question just stayed with me. I grabbed a piece of paper off some of the desk and just brainstormed, well, if you could do anything, what would you do? And the answer to what I would do is a list of things that I started putting down all the answers for 20 minutes and when I suddenly stare at the list at the end, I'm struck not by what I've written down, but by what I haven't written down. Law school is not on my list, which as you mentioned is inconvenient because I was at the time at law school in England. And so that I call my, I call back to England and my mother answers, fortunately. She

listens for a while. She says, I think you better talk to Dad. And so he comes on the phone and what does he say? You know, what would you say? What does a father say after all this time and money and effort and opportunity? I mean, I'm, it's a big deal to even be at law school for me at this point. And he listened, which is not entirely like him. And then he, because all Englishman Quote Shakespeare, over 10 crumpets for breakfast in the morning, he pulls this line straight out of Hamlet, he said, to thine own self be true. And that's a laity's, speaking to son laity's, rather. And that was what he was saying to me.

It's just, he didn't say this, but it was like, choose what's essential, and everything will work out. Just do, you know, choose what is right to let the consequences follow. And that's really what I did in that moment. It was permission to not do what I had imagined doing. And it wasn't like it was completely hair-brained. It wasn't somehow, I'd never imagined the life I was now trying to pursue.

It just, I was just trying to do it on the side. I was trying to say, well, I'm going to do laws, my main thing, but I want to teach you rights on the side. And suddenly I was like, well, you don't have to do what you've been doing in the past. You can do what it is. You have a real sense of mission for your highest point of contribution. It doesn't have to be just a pipe dream. You can start making those trade-offs right now.

And that has made all the difference. I find it so funny because I feel like almost 50% of the people that I interview were going to be lawyers and then change paths. Literally. I feel like I talked to someone and people, I'm like, you are supposed to be a lawyer, but then you decide not to. Because I think that like doctors, lawyers, engineers, it's kind of like you choose that because you think it's safe, you think that's what society wants, you think that like doctors, lawyers, engineers, it's kind of like you choose that because you think it's safe.

You think that's what society wants. You think that's what it means to be successful. And being an artist or doing something like that, you feel like is sort of unrealistic. When in reality, there's so many people out there who are successful doing what they love. So I just wish anybody who's listening right now, and if you're young and if you're in school, like get experiences, figure out what you like and don't just take the path that you feel is right, you know, because society says it's right, you can make money doing anything, right? I certainly believe that. It's been one of the important things for, for Anna and I with our children is to say, look, who are you uniquely? Life is hard enough. Even if you pursue in your career, things that you're naturally passionate about, that speak

to your talent, it's hard enough even if you do have those things in place. You don't need to make it harder by designing your whole career around stuff that actually you don't enjoy and you're not good at. I mean, like, once I said that way, it sort of seems obvious which path to take, but it is so normal to see people saying, well, laws the path, I just have to do this.

This is a respectable path. I wanna make 200 grand a year. This is the way, like guaranteed way, you know? So. Yeah, there's, you know, there's, you know, it reminds me of the beautiful question, you know, what will you do with your one wild and precious life? And to make sure that we're not living a parallel path.

As we all remember, parallel path is a, by definition, a two lines that never meet. And often what I found is that people, even when they're trying to do what they came here to do, they tend to compromise and go, well, this is, you know, this is a biss of what is as I want to do. Instead of saying, well, is there anyone who has actually taken the path that I want to take? Has anyone actually done it? And often the answer is many, many people have, and been successful at it.

So you can model yourself reverse engineer what it is that they have done and increase your chance of success. It's certainly reduce your chance of significant failure by modeling what they've done and how they've done it. And so it's a mental block, more than an actual, it's more than the work itself that I think holds people back. It took me being in a geographically different place with this, you know, permission to explore my life for me to suddenly get past that mental block for a lot of people that just trapped in the assumptions of their current lives.

And that's what keeps them from breaking through to a higher point of contribution. Totally, I love that advice. Okay, so you are known as the father of essentialism. And so I would love to give some color to our listeners, provide a definition because I'm sure there's a lot of people who have heard of this, but don't really know what it means. So what does essentialism mean to you? Essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. It is to pursue what is essential, the very important things, the most important things, it means eliminating all of the non-essential, the things that don't matter at all, and then it means creating

systems and routines to make it as effortless as possible to do what's essential, so that you can do it not once, but many, many times, so that you can do it in a sustainable way, so that you can become successful at success, so that you can break through to a higher point of contribution, instead of being trapped at the level that you are. That's essentialism. And I love that. You mentioned success. And I know that you got the idea for writing essentialism,

which is his first breakout book. And we're going to talk about your next book called Effortless Soon in a Bit. But for your first book, you got that idea because you were in Silicon Valley, you were working with executives, and you noticed that people, often when they had clear goals, they would be successful. But once they reached success, they would kind of get a little bit sloppy in their goals and experience failure. And so actually the problem isn't necessarily becoming successful the problem is what happens After success and maintaining that success so talk to us about that

Well, I mean first of all just look at the literature will show you that most of what's been written about success is about how to become successful Almost nothing has been written about what to do once you are. And that's a problem because everybody listening to your show, everybody watching this, is successful, literally. They might not feel that, they might not even self-identify, but if you have any kind of historical context, then this is clearly true. They're literate, they're interested, they have discretionary time to even be able to do this.

They're not working in some child labor environment. I mean, this is a tremendously successful time and these people by virtue of these choices are self-evidently successful. And so, for every person listening, it's not a question of how to be successful. It's actually a question of now already. How do we make sure that our current level of success doesn't rob us from the next level? And so in order to do this, in order to be successful at success, or in other words, how to go from successful to very successful. You have to become more selective. You have to not do everything good at your current level because that will consume you so much that you'll have no room to even think about what the 10X is. You won't even have the space in

your calendar quite literally. You'll stop prioritizing. You just wake up in the morning as many people do with all this optionality that they have and they just check email. And so that day becomes run by living in their inbox. We're at risk. I know I am on my worst days of my tombstone reading he checked email.

It's just this endless sort of stuff, and even good stuff, but what I have learned is that to help people break through, they have to apply what I would call the 90% rule. You're saying, what is 90% or above essential on an important continuum? And to try to then say anything that's below that is either a clear no, you actually just eradicate it or at least negotiate it, you consider it. That's what I've learned.

That's really helpful. And before we get into effortless, is there anything on essentialism that we need to know in terms of background to more clearly understand your takeaways from your second book? I mean, I think that what's important to understand is that these are complementary books. I think of them as a bit presumptuous, but I think about them as like the Paul McCartney

and John Lennon of my work so far. That is both of those musicians have created music or did create music outside separately, but it was when they were working together, the magic happened. That was when we had the Beatles and this extraordinary thing. And I think that that's important for people to appreciate. It's essentialism plus effortless together. And you know, we can do that with a single question, which is just this. What would happen if the trivial things in our lives became harder?

And the essential things became far easier. And to me, that's such a hopeful question. And it's such a, that would change everything. And in my experience, it does change everything. And it's such an important, you know, there's sort of these two elements. It's like, are you doing essential versus non-essential? Right? So that's what essential isn't about. Let's do the essential things, get rid of the non-essential, okay? That's step one. But then I've learned that a lot of people then approach the essentials in the wrong way. So even once they get clear, I know what my goals are, I know what matters to me, I've started to eliminate the non-essentials from my life. I mean, that's great, necessary, but insufficient. Because if you approach

it in the wrong way, you're still burnt out without achieving the results that matter most. And that's really what effortless is about. And it happens to a lot of people, lots of people listening to this are either burned out. Well, actually, I think everybody listening to this right now is either burned out or they know that burned out. Like that's those are the two types of people that are in the world right now. If that's the reality, you have to find a new way of executing. Why? Because you can't be both burned out and continually sustainably achieved next levels of success.

Those are like mutually exclusive. So the job is to find not just the right thing, that's essentialism, but to be able to do it in the right way, that's effortless. I love that. I can't wait to dive into effortless and all the steps and everything like that. I do have a personal question because I want to understand how can we decide what's essential? Because it's relative to everyone, right? And I know in your work, you talk a lot about how family, relationships, all these things are really essential. For me, I'm obsessed with my podcast.

I just launched a business that's blowing up. I'm obsessed with YAP Media. I have 40 employees really passionate about my work. And it's essential to me. So how do I prioritize, like if work is really important to me, and I love it, and I love doing the work,

what is like the litmus test, I guess, to know like how to prioritize things? I guess that's my question. Like how do you effectively prioritize what's essential in your life? That's a great question. But let me tell you what I heard when you said that. I want to make sure I heard it right.

But what I think I heard you say was, this really matters to me what I'm doing, my professional work. And I'm killing it. You didn't say that. But you know, like it is just, I like it. I love it. It's working. It's growing. it's succeeding.

But what I actually heard you say, the butt to that statement is, but I sometimes wonder if I'm really doing what is essential, whether there are other things I'm supposed to be doing. Or is it just society's telling me I need to do something else? Like that's what I heard in you was like a tension between all these things you're doing

that do produce a fulfillment for you, but a sense of something else. Am I hearing it right? Yeah, 100%. Like I wonder like, you know, I spend a lot of time at work and sometimes I don't hang out with my friends enough. Am I gonna regret that later? But I guess that's personal, you know, of course.

But I'm just wondering for anybody listening out there, like, how can they prioritize what really matters to them or their questions that we need to ask ourselves? Is there like an activity that we can do to kind of get it all down and figure it out? Like, how do you suggest we go about figuring out what is essential to us? If you don't mind, if it's not too uncomfortable to just push on you just a second more, or at least utilizing what you've shared to the benefit of your listeners, the how is already present in you and in everybody listening. It's just you have to amplify what you're already implying.

There's something in you saying, this is all great, but there's something else here that needs different investment. There's an essential, there's something essential that you're under-investing in. And you already mentioned friends, but I don't know if that's what you really mean, but it could be, it could be friends. It could be when you said the word friends, I felt like there was more to the word friends than you're, than you're implying, maybe it's maybe it's relationships, maybe it's family, maybe it's, you know, maybe that it was friends, but in a deeper meaning. And what, what I'm saying is that my mission isn't to go around telling anybody what's

essential, but people do know. They just have to listen to that voice. It's subtle in what you're saying to me, but I heard it. And other people listening have it in their lives too. A, you know, what a friend of mine called the difference between the scared voice and the sacred voice, which I like that language, that there is quietly in us a sacred voice that knows what's essential, that knows what we need to be doing, that knows the right path beyond. That's me when the person says, if you just, if says, if you could do anything, what would you do? It's just creating space to listen, to what is already available, but in my, well, you know,

I've got all these people telling, I've got law professors do this by this date. I've got, you know, society works, a good thing to do. I've got family conversations from the past saying,'s a good thing to do, I've got family conversations from the past saying, well, if you study law, it will keep your options open. I mean, these are all the external voices. They're worth listening to as well. I'm not saying we ignore all of that completely, but if we listen to all of that and don't listen to that still quiet voice inside of us, then we will end up pursuing the

non-essential. And I think that's the thing to do. And no one should tell us what that's saying, and no one I think even really can. But it is vitally important in a world that is often consumed in the undisciplined pursuits of more, to get quiet, to get still, to listen, amplify that, trust it, it knows that voice knows what's essential. Yeah, 100%. I totally agree. Sometimes you need to sit back, look at the big pictures, see what you're doing. So you're not just running in place and getting nowhere. I think that's really important. OK, so I know that you had a lot of success

with Essentialism. It was a breakout book. And part of you writing effortless was because you felt like you were trying to follow your principles in everything that you wrote. And then you realized that there was more to this. So talk just about your own personal experience and what that like aha moment was, like, okay, I need to write this book effortless.

Everything I've just described about success leading to plateauing into progress is something I experienced myself, and I was eliminating non-essentials, being more selective than I'd ever been. So I'm on that one criteria, like what's essential is clear, eliminate what's non-essential, that's clear. But even with all of that I still felt like I had more responsibilities. You said I'm father of essentialism but I'm also now father and four children by this point with all of those responsibilities. So and I'm wanting to do what I'm doing. There's no there's no like oh I think I'm in the wrong direction and I'm wanting to do what I'm doing. There's no there's no

like, oh, I think I'm in the wrong direction. I'm going down the right paths, but it's still too much. And in the midst of that, I mean, to use a metaphor, we've all heard, I'm sure, of the big rocks theory. And the big rocks theory basically says, you've got a container. If you put the sand in first, the really trivial stuff, and then the small rocks, the good stuff, and then the essential things, the big rocks, last, if you do that order, it won't fit. And how it's supposed to work is if you put the big rocks in first, your health, most important relationships, vitally important projects in next, to your health, most important relationships, vitally important projects in next, then it fits geometrically. That's how it's supposed to work. But what happens if you just have too many big rocks? If they're big rocks, by definition, they're essential. But what if there's too many for the space

you have, then, and then the midst of this question, then I have a family emergency where my daughter is in the picture of health suddenly just how this can be just, you know, her abilities just suddenly slow down inexplicably and suddenly we're dealing with this family crisis. An even bigger rock, let's say, and it's, well, there's a year out of space. And so it just pushed me to a point at first of just necessity. I've got to find a better way to approach what's essential because we can't just give up on these things.

I can't just put down one of the children, well, sorry, you don't matter. And this happens a lot when you're dealing with family crisis, you can end up putting down other essential things. And there's costs to all of that. And so what grew out of my experience over the next couple of years, of dealing with that were strategies for making it easier to do what matters most. Ways to make life overall easier than it was before, but ways also to make specific projects,

to streamline them, to make those easier, but overall to build systems that produce results for you, whether you can focus on them or not. And so these strategies, I went on to then codify these and to now write about them and I've been delighted to see, as you mentioned, became a New York Times best seller and it's just been great to watch this complement essentialism in helping people at this time of particular strain and stress for people. Yeah, it really does complement each other and it's super interesting stuff. So I know that you have three main sections in your book

and you compare these like three main steps for being effortless or having effortless work like you compare it to an MBA player giving a free throw. So talk to us about those three steps, give it to us at a high level, maybe use that analogy to set the stage and then we can walk into some more detail. Yeah, I mean that if you watch somebody take a free throw in the NBA, the WNBA, they find the dot, they get ready.

We've all seen a little ritual that it's different for different players, but everyone has a ritual. Maybe they bounced the ball three times, closed their eyes, sometimes deep breath. What are they doing? Why are they doing that? about the ball three times, close your eyes, sometimes deep breath. And what are they doing? What why are they doing that? Why don't they just, why don't they just throw the ball immediately? Get it through it. Why? We all know this, but it's worth just breaking down to just pause that they're getting into a certain state. I call it in the book, the effortless state. They're trying to clear away all the clutter.

They've got these, they've got fans from the other team gearing them, screaming at them. They've got burdens, worries, well, if I don't get this in, what happens to my, you know, my scores, what happens to my team, I mean, there's all this noise that will make it harder for them to do the essential job that they are there to do.

Now, this is all before the task, it's before the actual job of throwing that ball, but it's still vitally important because if they let that clutter consume them, it will make it harder to execute well on what matters. So that's the effortless state. It's to do with removing all of that menple and emotional complexity that just gets in the way of performance.

Step two, okay, there's this effortless action. You watch somebody who's particularly talented about this and they've done it many, many times. They bring you their elbow up to the square, flick, pop. It's a very smooth, don't overcomplicate it. They're not trying too hard. If they try too hard, they're going to miss it. You can imagine someone because they want to get done so badly they could over exert. And so it's all about being able to yes we care, but it's going to be in that effortless action. And people that master anything are in effortless action. There is effort, but there's not too much effort. It's not overcomplicated, not simple. So that's effortless action.

And that's for any of us who are trying to get a project complete, a task done is that we need to make the action itself a streamlined and effortless as possible. And then of course, the third part is you want the ball to go in a, in a predictable arch, you know, that satisfying sound as it goes through the net. And to be able to do it, the people that are the best in this, they can do it almost on repeat, you know, so that one of the best free throwers of all time can do it 100 in a row. And it will get to the point where it's just almost like robotic.

It just lands. You just need to move his feet between the ball. This keeps coming back. So that's the metaphor. It's effortless results. And effortless results, what that means is very specific, which is how do you create residual results instead of linear results. Linear results are one time thing.

You put the effort in once you get the effort back, the result back once. Residual results are how do you contract systems? I mean, they're the ultimate effortless idea because results flow to you, whether you put any effort in it all because you've built a system that then works for you, a system that stacks the deck in your favor. So that's it. That's just a model effort to state in the center of the diagram, concentric circles, then effortless action, then effortless results. This is the model. Brilliant.

Brilliant. So let's talk about effortless. A lot of people say, if it comes easy, it's not worth anything, no pain, no gain. These are all things that are really common in our culture for people to think that you need to do hard work in order to get good results. If you're not doing hard work, you're not successful or you're actually not getting anywhere and if it's easy, it means nothing. Talk to us about why that's the wrong way to think about it.

I'm in favor of any one you're ever going to meet. I do believe in effort. I believe that effort matters. There's only one problem with it, and that's is that it's a finite resource. And so the people I work with are high performers. They're parts of what my brother Justin calls the hit squad, hard working, intelligent, talented people. That's who I write to. That's who I'm speaking to. That's who I'm coaching for the part. I love the hit squad, hard working, intelligent, talented people. That's who I write to.

That's who I'm speaking to. That's who I'm coaching for the part. I love that hit squad. No. So you've got this hit squad group of people, and they want to go to, let's say, 10X results. They want to achieve 10X what they have in the past. Can they work 10 times harder? Can you work 10 times harder?

No, not at the... No. No. Not about it. about what I want to kill myself. Right. And even if you said I'm willing to make the crazy bargain, I'm going to kill myself, you still couldn't work 10 times harder. There's just people run out of space. I couldn't work 10 times harder. I can't work 10 times harder now, but I still want to achieve 10 times the contribution in the world. I want 10x impact even more than that. So how do you do that? Well, then you've got to construct a different way to do it.

You've got to come up with a different strategy. Otherwise, you will, in your attempt to go further, you'll just burn yourself out more. And so that's the challenge. You just run out of space on that strategy. Keep putting an effort, but now we have to figure out a way to use that effort in a way that it has a higher return. So we're talking here about ROE. You've got whatever effort you've got. Put in effort by all means, but now we have to figure out how to put that effort in so that we can return

back to 10X or the 100X outcome that you want. That's what I'm arguing for. That's who I'm trying to convince that there is. If you can't work harder, but you still want to go further, you have to find a smarter, easier strategy to achieve that. This is what effortless is really advocating. Oh, I'm glad I asked that question because I think that's super clear and I think that makes total sense. So let's talk about each one of these three stages. Let's start with effortless

state. Talk to us about some strategies. I know you mentioned this happens really before you start working on your task. And maybe let us know if you have any routines or routines that you suggest that we take when it comes to preparing for our work in this effortless state. Yeah, I mean, one of the smartest things that we can do in trying to create breakthrough effortless results is to accept this premise that easy does not equal lazy. That that upfront is a huge unlock for entrepreneurs and high achievers who have a running out of space. Because if they've been taught as many people have been taught to distrust the easy, then they are closed. It's like they've closed a whole door because yes, there are some easy things that are actually cheating.

Of course, we have no interest in it. I have no interest in violating virtue in order to achieve a goal. We're not, I'm not advocating for that. But as soon as you say, well, anything easy is lazy. Well, there's a lot that you've just taken off the table that could be incredibly helpful in you making a basic contribution in the world that you've closed. Literally, if you look up the definition of the word easy, the definition of the word lazy, they're not the same. I mean, I'm staging something that's got obvious, right?

But like, lazy is unwillingness to work. Easy is just something doesn't require a great deal of effort to achieve it. If you start saying they're the same thing, then you're going to just, you just, the problems are so predictable. Think about somebody I was coaching, hard, totally hit squad. She's the type of person who's up till four in the morning, photoshopping for a project in her at church, for the youth group the next day. So no one's asking her to do that, but she's so motivated and driven that she wants to make a higher contribution and she's been locked into this idea that the only way of demonstrating that is more and more effort. So that means less and less sleep. So she's the kind of person who, if she even eats lunch, she feels like she's being lazy, she's being, she's

violating something virtuous. If she eats lunch, I don't even mean she takes time to go away for lunch, if she even eats it, she feels guilty. So that's the type of person I'm talking to. So what do I say? I said, well, listen, there is this other virtuous part of like let's find easier strategies to achieve what you want. Let's not make everything so hard all the time. You still want to make a contribution, but the next day she gets a call from a professor, she works at a university, the professor comes and says, look, I need you to record a class for me for the semester. She just about to jump in because she knows more work, it was better results. And she's going to go, hey, I'm going to get a whole team, a videography team there. We'll record this from multiple angles. We'll edit it together. We'll have

music, intros and outros and graphics. And we're going to make this terrific thing. And we're going to wow him. And then she remembers coaching. Hold on. You know, is there an easier path? What if this could be easy? What might that look like? And it turns out that it's for one student who's going to miss a few sessions because of an athletic commitment and the solution they come up with is that another student will just record it on the iPhone and send it whenever this student's going to miss. That's the solution. The professor's thrilled, it takes only 10 minutes on a conversation to say four months of work for an entire team. She puts the phone down and she's just like, that's amazing. By opening the door, that easy does not equal lazy. I have just done this incredibly efficient, hyper efficient thing.

Everybody's happy. And I've got all that time rebate. That's the kind of thing that becomes possible when you can unlock this idea when you say, look, easy does not equal easy. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to run a successful business and graduate

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ole body care products in the store or online. Ole body, fearless in my skin. This episode of Yap is brought to you by Credit Karma. It's summer time and things are finally opening back up. I don't know about you but I am gearing up to start planning my travel. I am actually going to be heading over to Nashville for one week to attend the podcast movement conference. I'm so excited to meet all my different podcast friends from around the country. And if you're like me, your vacation dreams may be turning back into a reality too. But don't

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You know, it's anything that requires men, people, or physical exertion. And that sometimes that can be in place for time. But it could be that somebody is just overthinking something. You know, they're just over complicating what's coming their way. Thinking of Southwest Airlines when they have, you know, they're in composition with these other, you know,

major airlines and they're trying to be the low cost carrier airline. And, and they're trying to be the low cost carrier airline. And, and, and they're saying, well, we, we, we need to put in a new, the competitors are putting in this expensive ticketing system. It's going to cost $2 million for Southwest Airlines, and they, they're like, well, we, we want to spend money on this. But if we don't, then we fall behind our competitors. What do we do? And then finally, somebody said, well, do we care what they think a ticket is? Do we have to buy into their complexity? And everyone in the room, the executive team's like, no, we don't care what continental or united

think a ticket is. So what their solution was is we're going to have, and we're going to the receipt. We already print with the machines we already have. We'll just have it printed on it. This is your ticket. They saved them, self millions of dollars at a key point in their startup journey, because they just didn't add on all the complexity other people have on. So that's an example. It does give them a time rebate, but it was also just all that additional financial cost, because they

didn't add on all of that burden just because other people are doing it. They didn't have to do it that way. So I think if in one word, I would say effortless is simplicity. Effortless is about how do you make it as simple as possible and no, not more complicated than it or harder than it has to be. So let's talk about some problems when it comes to our work, some key problems. I know one of the problems is procrastination.

Another problem is people feeling like really just stressed out because a lot of the time's essential work just seems like it should be difficult, seems like it should be hard. So how do we flip that on its head and make essential work seem more fun? Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, a lot of people think about them as separate.

That essential things just of necessity need to be arduous and hard. That's a mental model, but we believe it so thoroughly, we sign up for that. But as soon as you unlock that and say, well, hold on, how can we just make it enjoyable? This essential thing, we're going to do it anyway, or it needs to be done. How can we make it enjoyable? And our family, the after dinner cleanup was one of our, was one of our, let's say, you know, not enjoyable tasks, but you have to do it. You're going look, we want to have a home that is in order. We want to have a home that feels decluttered and works and so on. So part of that is cleaning up every day. And so we said, we said, okay, how can we make it effortless? I did a few things.

I said, okay, we're gonna, what does done look like? We're gonna make that clear to the whole family. We're gonna divide roles and responsibilities. So everyone knows what they're doing. We train everyone, each child, each of us. And this all happens. And then day comes, we're to start this you know what happens. So anticipating this nothing happens. Everyone just disappears after dinner just like kind of always

and I'm grabbing them and pulling them back and it wasn't until my eldest daughter added just a little bit of fun to it. It changed the dynamic. It just that was the tipping point. And it was just putting on music, karaoke music, basically. And suddenly that just tilted the experience to be just fun enough that people wanted to be part of it. And it took a chore, drudgery, that was important into something that was actually an enjoyable ritual. And now it's like more like a party than it is work in the traditional sense.

And I put a clip of it on Instagram reason because I thought people won't believe me. But that's what we're talking about. How can you take something that was important but drudgery before and turn it into something that's an enjoyable ritual? Yeah, is there any example in terms of like actual work in that you can give in terms of how do we make that seem more fun or just easier? Like make it feel easier even though it's the same task.

Do you have any like business related examples? Sorry to put you on spot. No, I don't mind that. I mean, this is a very entrepreneurs answer. It's not going to work for everybody. But for me, I'd heard years ago about an entrepreneur who, after traveling, had all these voicemail messages and was like, oh, I don't want to do all this.

I don't want to have to call these people back. And then they say, how can I make it enjoyable? I've stolen this. I do this myself now. But they say, how can I make it more? I've stolen this. I do this myself now. But they say, how can I make it more enjoyable that, and as soon as they ask that question, you know, questions are answers. And so you ask a better question, get a better answer. And he's like, you know, what, what if I just, what if I call these people back in the hot tub? Now, I want to go sit in the hot tub. I want to go relax there. What if I call them back while

I'm there? And then he, while I was talking to them, he's like, he's like, he's like, I'm in the hot tub. I can't believe this. I just got back, but it, and it became funny and it was fun. And for them, it was funny. And they just, and by the time he was done calling him back, he's like, gosh, I wish I had more people. This was, this was enjoyable. And so it's about combining the thing that's essential with the thing

that's so, so fun you want to do it anyway. And putting that together into a, into a look forward to, and you can do. That's one example. I love that, I love that. Okay, so let's talk about big complex projects. Oftentimes when we have a huge project, we kind of become like in action. Like we can't do anything, we feel stuck,

we procrastinate, we're scared to get started, and it's all because we've got this big bohemist of a project and we're just scared of it. So what do you suggest that we do to kind of tackle that and make that more manageable? Yeah, his five questions that you can ask to really take a project, a big, hefty, sensual project that seems overwhelming and make it a lot simpler. Remove that unnecessary complexity. One, what does done look like? You can't complete a vague project. No one can. And the vague rate is the more chance there'll be mission drift, a mission creep, and you'll just keep on adding and adding and just give up before you even got there. So just being clear, like what is sort of minimum standard

for what does done look like? The second question is just what steps can I delete? How can I remove any of the steps that aren't necessary? There's all sorts of examples about this, but Steve Jobs was a genius level at this. And when his strategies don't take something complex and make it simpler, you start from zero. You say, let's say there's no steps involved.

How can we achieve this in one step? This is kind of step, this is question two. So what steps can I delete? The third question is what is the obvious first action? A lot of us get caught up in the hundredth step, the 1000th step, and all the possible steps. And it's just like literally your body can only do one thing next. And so it's just actually identifying that. So what's the first obvious action?

The fourth question I would recommend is what gradual pace can I sustain? You don't want something on one of these major projects that you go big app for a weekend or for one week or for one day and then it's just too much. And so then you become intermittent in your effort on it. You want sustainable efforts. So you want to say, okay, what's the, what's sort of my maximum that I could do this and maintain health and energy, and then you go step before it so that you don't reach diminishing returns or negative returns. And then the fifth question, which just makes everything easier along the path, is just

what can I be grateful for? And we all know if you're suddenly running a marathon, that's hard enough. As soon as you start complaining about the process, you're just making it even harder. So whatever your project is, whatever you've signed up for, it's about how can I be grateful along the journey because that will affect what state you're in and affect your overall experience with it.

Those are five questions that people can ask. So I think immediately make a big overwhelming project we may be procrastinating into something that's more doable. Oh my gosh, I think everybody should go rewind that portion because I think it's so useful. I love the concept of these like minimum viable actions, you know, to really look at your end goal and say, what is the least amount of actions or steps that I need to take in order to get this done? And then if you're a perfectionist or overachiever, like I sometimes like to like throw in the whole

kitchen sink, well, oh, you need this, but I can do this, this, this, and that too, you know, but that's not the right thing to do. You actually need to think, all right, if I want to keep making progress and tackle as many things as possible, how do I make sure that I'm not putting too much time into this project that doesn't really need that amount of time because I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be, right? So I just think that that is so smart. Not everything needs a second mile. Overachieve is tend to add. Somebody asks for X and we go, add, somebody asks for X and we go, I can give you X. Let me give you X, Y, Z. I will give

you X. I'll give you X. All right. And it's like, no, they just, but I just wanted X. And I, I, an example of this in my, at a key moment in my, in my career, I have this great opportunity with a tech company that comes to me. They want to partner with me. They're like, look, you know, I want you to come to do these three presentations for us, but really the goal is to have you come and help us over the next two to three years on this journey and how we can scale. It's just a great opportunity. We have agreed on what the content is. We have the content ready.

It's the afternoon before the first presentation. And I'm like, well, let me just kind of tweak this. You know, I know they want X, but what if I could give them, you know, Y and Z as well? Like, I, and there's some new things I'm thinking about here that are really on the edge and I think that could be so terrific for them. And, and so I start working on it. It's the afternoon and I keep working in its hours and its hours and then I'm working in the evening and I'm like, okay, we'll try out those slides. Let's do new slides. And then, okay, well, the present, I've already sent them the them the documents, so they've approved those and they've printed them. But if these would

be even better, and so I work, redo the handouts, but the time, I didn't pull in all night it, but I was up to the early hours. And by the time I'm driving there to the event the next morning, I'm in my foggy brain, I can't think is clearly, I'm not familiar with the presentation, because I've just done it. It's untested. And I'm standing up there and I'm doing these slides and I keep having to turn around to even know what the slide is. And somebody asked me a question because the slide gave them a certain impression and

I don't know what to say about that. So I'm a bit defensive. It's a disaster. The thing is a disaster. But thing is a disaster. I have stolen victory from the jaws of defeat. As I said, no, stolen, I can't remember how to say, stolen defeat from the jaws of victory. I've somehow I had taken a thing that was already in the bank and I have ruined it. And why? I've ruined it because I'm trying to be an over achiever. I'm trying to, and I think if I do, if I push harder, then I'll get a better result.

And that's exactly opposite of what happened. And that's where you've got to be very conscious of that when we reach diminishing returns. Stop. If you ever get to negative returns, what economists call negative returns on this, yeah, you definitely want to stop because the longer ever get to negative returns, what economists call negative returns on this, yeah, you definitely want to stop because the longer you work in negative returns, you're making it worse than if you had done nothing at all. And that's literally what I did. And I think that's relevant for a lot of insecure overachievers. And I can certainly be guilty about myself. Yeah, 100%. I mean, on the same way with interviews. Sometimes I'll kill myself.

Like, I need to listen to every interview. I need to read every book. I need to write 50 questions just in case. And then I'm so tired by the time the interview hits that I can't even just be myself and be in the zone and just kill it. You know what I mean? So every time I screw up an interview,

it's always because I'm like overly trying to prepare and just sometimes it's better to just absorb it and then be like, all right, we're just going to have the interview and it is what it is. So you know, so I totally agree. And you've just made the argument for it just there, right? That's exactly the point is that this, the message that we're talking about today doesn't work for everyone. If somebody is being in fact lazy, then this isn't for them. But if somebody is already an overachieving,

if they're already driven, if they're already in the hit squad, you can't, don't push harder. And a lot of people do this when they start to hit burnout. They're not getting by, almost by definition, the results they want. And so then they think, well, the answer must be to push even harder, double down on this. And so of course it gets them in a cycle of just perpetual exhaustion and burnout and so

on. And it's like, you got to stop, walk away, nobody gets hurt. Know what, pay attention, take some self-awareness, when am I reaching the medicine returns and stop? And I think something else that kind of relates to this is the important of building in rest. Like for example, I find that if I study a bit for an interview and then I just relax and rest,

that I do better than if I just study, study, study, study, study, study, try to learn as much as I can. You know what I mean? So, talk to us about the importance of resting, what that does for us, and why we need to actually consider rest as a task that's essential and not just something that we do if we have the time. Overachievers are rubbish at rest. Rest is a responsibility, as important as the work is.

And the reason for that is not because, oh, I say so, I think so. It's because we're biological creatures, and as you study the data on this, you're not a machine, we're not a factory, so you can't try to get better results by saying, oh, here we'll go 24-7, as you could with a factory system that works in perpetuity. We work in rhythms. Everything in human performance works in rhythms. For example, Anders Erickson, he asked the question, he said, when we sleep, we sleep in rhythms. 90-minute cycles, approximately. We all pretty much know about this. But he said, do those cycles continue into the day? And he wanted

to study that and he found the answer was yes. So what's the ramification of that is that is that you need to try and protect the morning for the most important essential work and you divide it into three 90 minute segments. You do 90 minutes, pause for 10 to 15 minutes, go take a quick nap, you can go for a walk, you can do whatever, but definitely a break. And then you come back for the next 90 minutes, and you do three of these in a cycle. That's like optimal performance is going to follow that cycle. Now, you can ignore that. As most people currently are, you can just zoom each sleep repeat all day long every day, but then you're going to be exhausted.

Then you're going to look at your Fitbit at the end of the day, it's 300 steps. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to break through to the next level. Certainly not in all of the important areas of your life in that approach. So you need a discipline pursue rhythms of rest and execution. And literally all of the data supports what I'm talking about here, it's like you remember bloodletting, you know about bloodletting right, it used to be that the medical profession universally believed that the problem a lot of disease existed in the blood. And if you could just get the blood out of people, if you could drain it from them,

then you would bring health to them. That literally never worked. That is a totally false idea. All you do is weaken the patient, weaken the person, sometimes kill them, certainly hurt them. And yet the entire medical profession was at one time advocating this and doing this and practicing it.

Even though results were not, it didn't never help. They just may have appeared to help. Similarly, this endless, relentless hustle mentality of treating ourselves as if we aren't rhythmic biological creatures does the biological creatures. It does the same thing. It's just as wrong, but it's become such a cultural norm that people think, oh, well, but that person is successful and they do it. Yeah, that success will not cause of it.

There's many, many people who are doing that, and they are slowly dying of that practice. So what we need to do is take what is for many overachievers as zero competence on rest and relaxation and go like just learn from zero, people don't even know how to relax. They don't know how to, you have to say, how do I relax? How do what relaxes me?

And you have to start, I made a list of 20 things, my wife made a list of 20 things just by being observant. What relaxes us? What is good rest for us? And as you construct that list, you can then design your life around this rhythmic approach to success. It's vitally important if you want to sustain

top performance or even get to the next level. I literally think that that is my number one thing that I need to work on is my rest getting more sleep, taking more breaks, stop working 16 hours a day. Like, and so the 90 minutes, 10 minute break, 90 minutes, 10 minute break, 90 minutes, 10 minute break, I think that's a great formula. Are you suggesting that's all we work in a day?

Those just 90 minute chunks? I don't think so. I don't think that that's necessary, but I think that if you don't prioritize, a lot of people aren't prioritizing a talk. It's not they don't understand the idea of prioritization. It's just they aren't doing it. They're just on the inbox, as we've talked about. So the first thing that I would recommend to people is that they schedule a meeting with themselves. And in that meeting, you are among other things you're making a list. I like the little formula that works well for me is six things in priority order.

This is the six things that are really important to get done today. I like personally to have the first three be personal, personal slash family, and the next three be work. So it's then once you prioritize those things, I did it this morning, I don't do it every day, but when I don't, I can feel the difference. So you go through that prioritizing process and that little meeting with yourself. And then you take those three items like for work, for example, and you schedule those as well as you can for those early morning high productivity hours when you are going to be the best chance you have at being in your effortless state is in those hours where you're well-rested,

your at ease, your focus of what's important and you can do it. I just had Arthur Brooks on my podcast, The What's A Central Podcast, and he writes for the column every week for the Atlantic is written 11 best-selling books I think. He's a Harvard professor, great family man. I mean, like he's a success story in a lot of ways. And he protects the first four hours of his work day, just absolutely for writing and research and creative work. And so that's the idea, is to protect the mornings for the creative work so that then you can utilize the rest of the day, either to rest, yes, but also for just other work, there's other things you're going to respond, but they don't require the same kind of attention. Again,

your effort is fixed. You want to use your effort in the way that helps you to make the maximum progress. The concentrated work in the morning, three things if you possibly can identify them, work on those things, and then let the afternoon time be a time for, you know, okay, then catch up on email, then have your phone calls, then have your podcast interviews, whatever, try and do that in the afternoon. Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with nom nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's

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at Shopify.com.sash.Profiting. Again, go to Shopify.com.sash.Profiting.all lowercase to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com.sash.Profiting.shop.sash. Profiting all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify.com-profiting. Shopfly.com-profiting. All lower case. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Yeah, bam, if you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the six or seven-figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but six thriving companies,

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available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I actually interviewed Daniel Pink. I think you know him too. And he says the same thing too. And, you know, after 2 PM, 3 PM, that's when you're gonna have a slump anyway. You're gonna feel tired after lunch later on. You may feel creative or want to work out. But to your point, early

in the morning, those first four hours, super important, listen to his advice guys. He just gave you amazing advice. Make sure you take it. So let's talk about the last step results. Talk to us about what we need to think about when it comes to our results, what's the difference between linear and residual results, how can we make sure that we have more residual results in our life? Yeah, I think this is like the hidden game changer in effortless, hidden in the sense that it's the final third of the book. But I just, this just hit me so hard as I was researching the book.

And let me share a story to put it in context. A linear result is one time results. You have to put the effort in today to get the result. A residual result is something that you put the effort into build a system that works for you, even if you don't do anything. It could be literally nothing or maybe just a tiny amount of maintenance,

but the thing just works. And what I'm arguing with this is that you can achieve, not just 10X as we've talked before, but it will sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not when I say it could be 100X or 1000X. So let's stay on this like extreme 1000X return on effort. Jessica Jackley, friend of mine, goes to Africa, she's there with her husband and a team of friends, and they're trying to make a difference there.

So they've got motive and they've got fixed amount of effort. How do they approach it? They come across an entrepreneur who is themselves trapped in linear results, of kind of subsistence level. She can only survive a day if she is on the road selling produce. That's the only way she can have enough food to eat herself and for her children. If she misses a day, they don't eat, so she has to be there every day, right? So you've got a completely linear life. Can't get ahead. What would it take to get ahead, Jessica asks? Well, it turns out $500 would be enough to be a game changer for her. Why? Because she'd be able to start constructing a system that looked like, well, I go to the

fisheries, I go to the farmers farmers and I can actually set up a system so that I can get produce directly from them, add profit into my business, and suddenly just start to get a little bit ahead every day instead of just maintaining subsistence level. So they're willing to gather $500 and give it to a helper. And they think, well, maybe it could be alone because then we could help two people,

or three people, or 10 people. And then they start saying, well, what if we could create a system that would help people with micro loans so they could create systems to be able to get ahead? So it's like a systems on systems idea. And that's exactly what they did. They built a system that creates systems,

they call it Keeva. And so $500, that's linear. They now have successfully had $1.3 billion worth of micro loans paid out. 97% of those are repaid, so it just goes on and on. That's the difference between a linear result and a residual result. I mean, the difference, this is it. I mean, you can talk about being more efficient in a single project, and we should be in the way we've talked about.

But the real game changer is where you can maybe get so efficient in the projects you're doing, you create space to start working on the systems of your life, on the systems of your business. And then it literally is almost limitless then. create space to start working on the systems of your life, on the systems of your business. And then it literally is almost limitless then, once you can work on your systems, that you can, you can have results, the flow to you while you're sleeping,

you can have results flow. I use sometimes the death test. If I died today with this result, continue. And I'm really serious about wanting that because I think, you know, I wanna leave the world not just better than I found it so to speak, right? I've made a contribution, but in a way that you say, well, 100 years from now, I've long gone, but there's still benefits that are going on. I just talked to Rob Deadeck on my podcast. I don't know, people know Rob, but I mean, lots of people do and I didn't expect to have my mind blown by him, but I was.

He sent me a 50-page document called The Rhythm of Experience for his life, which is the systems that he's put in place to enable his life and his family and so on. And he just basically learned a few years ago that he'd created one set of a system for his life that was so dependent on him that his businesses weren't even investable from somebody came along and said, we want to invest in your businesses, they looked into them and they're like, I know everything's dependent on you. If you don't show up, nothing works. And he's like, I got it.

So he's built systems, businesses that build businesses. He just understood this shift and now he's created these just remarkable residual results and they're not going to stop anytime soon. So that's what I'm talking about when we talk about effortless results is really building systems that produce results for you. And then you can go further and further up without, again, it's not even related to burnout, it's not even related. I love that. I think that is a key part of all of this. How do you scale? How do you automate?

How do you build systems so that you can have residual results? So you're not having to spend your time on every little thing. So you can be, you know, taken out of the picture in terms of your time or effort, you can basically just imagine something, build it, and let it run by itself. And then, like you said, 10 extra results. I love that. I'm personally thinking about that in my business, figuring out how can I hire a different agency to run this social media and just refer them and white label them instead of having to

do it all ourselves. You know, so I love talking about that. So I think this was an amazing conversation. So many lessons, guys. Make sure you go grab his book, Essentialism, and his book, Effortless. Greg is amazing. So the last question we ask all of our guests on the show

is what is your secret to profiting in life? What is your secret to profiting in life? Well, the first answer that comes to me is my wife Anna. That is the answer to that question. I have very rarely made a poor decision if we've spent time talking about it working together. She has uncommon sense. She's really savvy, wicked smart,

but she's also just deeply good. And if you want to talk about residual results, I mean, like marry the right person is serious, like we've heard that advice before, I'm sure all of us have, but that's seriously good advice, right? It's one decision that produces 1,000 results. And she's just like the highest trust person

that I've ever met. And so she is a secret for how to profit in life. Oh, that's so cute. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? One thing I would recommend is going to essentialism.com where there's a new academy that I'm building specifically for residual impact.

It's a place where instead of like, OK, you have to happen to be in a keynote where I'm speaking to be out of here, things there's a whole academy in which is downloading more and more content all the time to it. So as soon as people become part of that, they get to access the best of this thinking

as they design their own lives to be able to really to profit. Awesome. So I'll stick the link in the show notes for that. I'll stick the links for his book. Thank you so much, Greg. Really appreciate this conversation. It's my pleasure.

Thank you, Halle. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you loved this content, make sure you subscribe to this channel before moving on. So you always know when we drop a new episode. Greg gave us such amazing insights on how to prioritize our values and avoid burnout. And I hope you guys can learn from him and start taking effortless actions in your life. Greg shared with us his definition of essentialism or the disciplined

pursuit of less. He first came up with the idea while he was in Silicon Valley. He noticed that so many successful entrepreneurs he was working with often fell off the deep end after achieving their initial goals. Most of what's been written out there is all about how to achieve success, but nothing about how to maintain it once we get there. Greg says that we can't just live our life in our email inbox. We can't just get distracted by every ping and ring and kind of let our day be guided by what people need from us. And to help people break through, we have to follow the 90% rule, which is to value and prioritize the most important parts of our life first. And we have to determine our priorities because they are the measures for which we can tell

if our life is turning out the way we actually want it to. When the things we say and do match our values, we're usually happy, satisfied, and content, so we have to make conscious effort and take the time to identify what our values are and why they are important to us. Even when your essentials are known, a lot of people approach the essentials in the totally wrong way. If you do that, you're going to burn out. We can't be both burned out and achieve massive success. There's a quiet voice inside of us, a sacred voice that really knows what's essential. And let's say you happen to have a ton of essentials. It's best to set lower and upper limits

for the amount of work you're gonna do towards that essential, so you can make consistent progress without having to get burned out. And also we have to try to make our essentials enjoyable so we can look forward to them. And that way, the most important activities can also become the easiest activities. Those are just some of the takeaways that I took from this episode.

I'd love to hear what you think if you want to drop us a 5 star Apple Podcast review, let us know what you thought about this episode. And if you liked this show and you want to learn more about productivity strategies, check out episode number 105, Smarter Ways to Work From Home with Laura Vanderkamp. And if you haven't subscribed to Young & Profiting Podcast yet, please take a moment to do so so you can be alerted every time we drop a new episode. And go ahead, drop us a review on Apple Podcast, Castbox, Podbean, or wherever you listen to this podcast.

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So thank you for following directions. And the review says, obsessed. This podcast is so amazing and inspiring. This is a great lesson for young adults. I'm 22 years old and each podcast I'm able to take so much out of, and use it to help me build a better future for myself. I've gained so much knowledge to become more successful, and I would not be where I am today without all the useful tips and stories that have been told on this podcast. Amazing in caps. Thank you so much, Cam, for this awesome review.

And if you love YAP2 and if you think we're amazing and if you're obsessed as well, again, take a couple minutes to leave us a review. It is the number one way to thank us here on Young & Profiting Podcast. And remember, you can find me on Instagram at YappwithHala or LinkedIn just search my name, it's HalataHah. I'm also on Clubhouse and Greenroom at HalataHah. Big thanks to the Yapp team as always, this is Halah signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and

practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule.

Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know Yourself better, where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Ruben. A blank page holds infinite possibilities. PAPI-A creates thoughtfully designed stationary journals, notebooks, and more. Each page is as special as the ideas you put in them. Best of all, their products can be personalized for free to be uniquely yours or an unforgettable

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