Is there a goal you want to make progress on, if only you had the energy? Do you assume that anything worth doing must take tremendous effort? Have you ever abandoned a hard but important activity for an easy but trivial one? Are you often overwhelmed by the complexity that's expanding everywhere? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you might be making life much harder for yourself than it needs to be. This book stands alone on its own merit away from the author's previous work--you don't have to have read his first book to be able to shift your thought patterns or take action on the many pieces of advice he shares in this new book. I highly recommend it. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

This is an absolutely inspiring read full of hope and possibility. Imagine what life would feel like if everything we did – all our essential endeavours – were effortless. Well Greg McKeown shows us how this is absolutely possible in his new book, Effortless. In it we learn how to choose the lighter road – the road (sadly, for us) lesser travelled. We are too quick to believe that work and progress requires the hard slog, that anything worthwhile will inevitably be difficult – we even wear our struggles as a badge of honour. McKeown proposes a way to escape this and in doing so live a more enjoyable, productive and rewarding life. I haven’t read Mckeown’s previous work on Essentialism, but I plan to skip my lighter path right to his website after I’ve written this review, so I can find out more about that too. Effortless is an extension of his thinking about ’Essential Living’ but it works perfectly well alone too. This book really spoke to me and utterly makes sense. Even reading it felt effortless – I was totally engaged in Mckeown’s conversational style and really fascinated by its content. It takes lots of ideas, some that I have heard of, know well or seem familiar, and pulls them together with new clarity. For example, the effortless state he writes about reminds me of the idea of ‘flow’ in play theory - the sense of getting into the zone where anything is possible, everything feels easy. It’s not necessarily new thinking but what I like about this book is that it applies this thinking in new ways, giving hands-on insight into how this ‘state’ might be translated beyond sport or play or talent (where we see it often) and into the day to day. How can it help us get around to the household tasks we put off, add enjoyment to the mundane or increase productivity in our working lives? And, most importantly, how do we achieve it? How can we make these things feel more effortless? It suggests ways to successfully find the reward in the task - or add one - like listening to your favourite podcast as you exercise and much, much more. It’s an extensive exploration that I don’t want to oversimplify. It is in fact, three stages full of anecdotes and suggestions. It was invigorating to start thinking how I could apply this and I began to implement some of the learning in my day to day. Again, it doesn’t feel like it’s entirely new to me - but it has clarity in its purpose and lots of practical suggestions. What is probably most helpful in the book – and in keeping with the effortless journey – is how McKeown summarises the key learning at the end of each section pulling all the anecdotes, actions and good advice into a clear understanding that you can easily begin to implement in your life. I powered through the book for the purposes of the ARC review, but I will go back and spend a little more time with it now. It’s one of those texts where you can read a section and then actively begin to implement the learning in your life before moving on to the next section. Section three could even be saved for a point where you have tried out all the learning and had chance to start feeling the change. I’ve definitely felt the shift in my mindset and how I approach my work and play and I’m eager to try more! I – 100% – recommend this fantastic book. It feels like there are lots of take away opportunities for everyone, from mothers/parents just taking steps back to working life (like me), to those at the top of their game. Anyone who needs to find a positive work/ play balance and who wants to enrich their life a little.