Looking at the past 15 or so years, few books have influenced my aspirations as much as Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism.” It must also be the single book I’ve most gifted to others (apart, maybe, from the Discourses of Epictetus). This is to say that I approached McKeown’s new book “Effortless” with great expectations.

The premise, based on the author’s own experience, is relatable enough: You feel like you’re a pretty decent essentialist. You’re focusing on what’s most important. You adhere (at least more often than not) to the “disciplined pursuit of less.” However, there’s still too much: Too much you want to get done. Too much that others want you to do. Too much to read, to write, to work on… Just… too much.

This is where “Effortless” comes in: McKeown argues that worthwhile things—results—don’t necessarily have to stem from superhuman exertion. Quite the contrary, it’s possible to set up mechanisms that “allow results to flow to you… effortlessly.”

The book is structured in three sections, talking about the “Effortless State” first, then “Effortless Action,” and finally “Effortless Results.” The “state” McKeown is talking about initially is often paralleled to “flow”—a condition where your mind and body are so on task that you don’t even notice that you’re in the process of doing something “hard.” Athletes, writers, coders, musicians, and many others are somewhat familiar with it. But there are means to induce that state and leverage its benefits also for less-than-transcendental tasks. “Effortless Action” comes down to more practical advice: Define “what done looks like,” start with “the first obvious action,” have the courage to produce “rubbish” at first, set an achievable pace, etc. Finally, in “Effortless Results,” the author talks about the concept of “leverage,” as well as perpetual and compounding results. An obvious approach to achieve those is automation, but also investing in learning the right skills or preventive mechanisms that eliminate the need for handling failures down the line.

Will I be handing out as many copies of “Effortless” to friends and colleagues as I have of “Essentialism?” Probably not. But is it worth reading? Definitely. It’s a good reminder that doing things “the hard way” isn’t always a necessity, if the “easy” way can produce the same results. However, I’m a bit wary about how that message will resonate in today’s culture. Overworked (and overwhelmed) people already take many shortcuts that are easy to implement and create “plausible,” but useless, outcomes—think, for example, of countless reports and other documents that are produced by ChatGPT instead of created by thoughtful humans with expertise and insight. I truly hope that readers will not take McKeown’s book as an invitation to flood the world with more bullshit by doing less work, but rather to heed his general advice of focusing on the right things and doing these well.