Fighting overwhelm and burnout - Coaching book club February - Effortless

If you feel overwhelmed and burnt out, then this book may be for you!

Welcome to Coaching book club where each month we read a book together and work out how to transfer the key messages out of the book into our real life!

This is week one of Februarys pick, 'effortless' by Greg Mckeown. This book helps you to answer the question what if we stopped trying to fit more in and instead started to make life simpler, effortless? If like me it's a question you've briefly flirted with but rejected because you were convinced that next week wouldn't be as busy, it's worth listening!

He describes, through stories, that sneaky gradual process that happens where you ultimately end up completely burnt out but have no real recollection of the path that bought you to this point, very few people choose to live at that pitch for the love of it, most of us end up in overwhelm and its sister city, burnout because we felt that if we just worked harder we could do it.

The author believes that this work harder or hard work mentality is at the core of the issue, that culturally we are pre-programmed to celebrate hard workers but not to measure the personal cost of this hard work.

I can see what he means, it's super easy to just go a little faster to fit more in, whether that be in work projects or juggling the logistics of life. It’s that feeling when you have achieved everything on the planner at the end of the week but felt like you only achieved it by giving up sleep, not meeting up with a friend, remembering a non- uniform day at the very last minute, shouted at your kids in the car because you were on the verge of being late. Nearly missed a deadline, ignored non urgent emails. You get the gist; you are hanging on your fingertips and just one more thing will send you over the edge.

To everyone else you look like you are winning but the reality feels very different.

Okay, so I'm convinced! How can I create an effortless life? Well, to start, the more we juggle the less effectively our brain processes.

The more energy we invest in the loud noises in our lives the harder it is to find the effortless state we need, think about your computer running slower than you'd like, to improve the speed we need to close tabs. The author gives the example of how different we can feel after a good night’s sleep, a hot meal, or a shower. This re-setting makes us feel lighter, gives us clarity because, he argues, that we are in our effortless state, unburdened by the messages we receive all the time.  

Taken directly from the Effortless book, page 24.

To create this effortless state the author offers 5 elements we need to consider, and this week we've covered two so far, invert and enjoy.

What would happen if we inverted hard work and instead asked, what if this could be easy? The author doesn’t mean just say it as some kind of mantra in your head or to see it as gratitude. He means what if we looked for the easiest method to create the desired outcome?

The key thing I took away from this segment was when you are asked to do something or include something extra into your life, for example your boss asks you to complete another project, or your kids want to add another after school club in.  It is SOOO easy to just grab it and run. However, there is such power in stopping and asking some questions, I relate HARD to this. If you assume what someone wants, then potentially then hold yourself to an IMPOSSIBLE standard to create it, prior to asking enough questions and exploring the exact outcome they want then you are making things harder than they need to be, rolling something down a hill is much easier than pushing it up.

The second method the author explores is enjoy, coupling things that you don't want to do with things that make it fun or more enjoyable. Gamifying tasks, adding in fun, condensing the lag between the reward you feel for carrying out the task and doing the task. I do this with emptying the dishwasher, a job I loathe, I play a song and I must finish before the end of the song. It works every time because I am finding the effortless state.  I’m reminded of another book which describes the sensation of flow. Flow is the feeling where the task absorbs enough of your energy and concentration that you are completely engulfed and forget to pay attention to time or your environment.

My last pick from the book this week is the notion of creating rituals. The act of converting tasks into habits is something I am borderline evangelical about. If you have a habit the amount of mental energy, you exert is so much lower than if you must remember to do that task every day. So, it makes complete sense to me that by extending that habit into a ritual it decreases the amount of emotional and mental energy further. What’s the different between a habit and a ritual I hear you say? Well, the author defines it at 'habits with soul', think Marie Kondo, decluttering based on what gives you joy, think taking your vitamins daily because you are looking after yourself, lifting weights for your old lady bones etc. I introduced a north pole breakfast on the first weekend of December for my kids and it is the most anticipated meal of the year still, over a decade later because of what it means, the feelings, the anticipation, the soothing nature of knowing what comes next.

Next week we are reading pages 53-105, come and get involved!