WELP!  I did not like this book.

That surprises me, because “Essentialism” by McKeown has a prominent place on my “best of” shelf.  It’s a book I have read more than once, and purchased and given to a number of people.  Essentialism is a great book, though it’s not perfect (it was about 30% longer than it should’ve been).

So I pre-ordered “effortless” and read it over the course of a few days.  I’m going to talk about what I didn’t like for a bit in the next few sections, then I’m going to recommend some other books you should read instead, so if you don’t care about what I didn’t like about this one and just want to learn what to read instead, feel free to skip to the last section.

Another entry in the “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” genre

Although I liked Think Again (my last review) I complained that it just kind of gives you a ton of things to try, and doesn’t really give you any structure.  It’s a book that says “I don’t know man, have you tried this?  Or this?  Or this? … etc.”. I think a book should take a stand and say something.  It should indicate key takeaways.  Saying “I don’t know, maybe one of these things will work for you” feels like a cop out to me.

(I mentioned I had a similar problem with a book by Brene Brown in a little personal aside much like this one)

Apparently “give a bunch of only vaguely related suggestions” is now a genre, because effortless clearly falls into it.  There isn’t a process, or key practices, or findings, or a template or ANYTHING.  The book just has about 100 1-3 page sections.  Here are some headings for these sections:

• Weaken the impossible
• A one-way ticket to easy
• Work easy, play easy
• Create building blocks of joy
• Create habits with a soul
• Accept what you can’t control
• The Magic of Microbursts
• The Simplest Steps are the Ones you Don’t Take
• Powerless Effort Versus Effortless Power

These should not be in a book.  They should be on one of those calendars where you tear a page off every day for a shot of “inspiration” that you give to your grandma and you come to her house later and you find she’s taped “Accept what you can’t control” onto the fridge and you read it and go “Man, this is kind of garbage,  I should’ve read this calendar before giving it to my grandma.”

Some of the sections are pointless.  Some are fine.  Some take a really important subject that entire books have been written about, and then crams it into three pages.  I mean, he did his best to fit the entirety of “Man’s Search for Meaning” into one paragraph (without attribution — although his point was kind of the more popular message from the book, so maybe he never actually read it?).  It didn’t work well.

The subtitle of this book is “Make it easier to do what matters most.”  A better subtitle might have been “I’m sure I’ve got a cliche around here somewhere that’ll help you out.  I mean, I have hundreds of them.  One of them has to feel profound, right?”

I’m being overly mean at this point, so I’m going to stop this section and move on to the next thing I didn’t like about the book.

I mentioned the overall structure sucks?  Also the internal logic

So the structure of “Fifty 3-page-mantras or whatever” is lame, but also the mantras (or whatever) themselves leave something to be desired.

I’m going to use a particularly egregious example.  On page 157 you hit a section titled “Find Commonalities.”

(This is after a section called “Seek Principles” where he basically found a way to stretch “give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime” over six paragraphs)

In “Find Commonalities” McKeown tells the story of Peter Kaufman, editor of Poor Charlie’s Almanack and man who has the modest goal of wanting to understand “how everything in the world works.”

So what does Peter do?  Over six months, he read “the condensed interview at the end of every copy of Discover magazine ever published online: 144 interviews in all.”

I have no problem with reading 144 condensed interviews as a way of gaining knowledge.  I would argue that’s not sufficient to understand “how everything in the world works.”  McKeown seems to believe the 144 condensed interviews provide ample instruction that allowed Peter to understand “how everything in the world works” because he relates this story completely uncritically.

After reading 144 condensed interviews Peter divides all of knowledge into three buckets.  “The inorganic universe” was bucket one, “biology” was bucket two and “human history” was bucket three.  These buckets are fine, but also arbitrary, but who cares.  McKeown, once again, does not comment on the arbitrary nature of Peter’s decision making so far, but instead takes the story as gospel truth.

Peter posits that if you can find a rule that is applicable across all three buckets it is a commonality — a universal principle.  As an example he cites “Mirrored reciprocation” — this is “you get what you give” and is exemplified by the law of inertia in bucket one, a cat scratching you if you grab its tail in bucket two, and the fact that people treat you how you treat them in bucket three.

McKeown explains further: “Just think of all the ways we can apply that principle!  Send a thank-you note, and you will get one back.  Smile sincerely at someone, and they will smile back at you.  Offer information to someone in a conversation, and they will tend to share information with you in return.”

He states all those things as fact.  Are they?  Have you gotten a thank-you note in return every time you’ve sent one?  Do people smile back at you every time you smile at them? Do people spontaneously share information with you anytime you share something with them?

The answer, so, so obviously, is no.  None of that is universally true.  It doesn’t have to be!  I mean, if he positioned this as “a way of behaving that will lead you to a more pleasant life” then I would have no problem with it.  But McKeown (and Peter) outlines this as a law as that is as immutable as Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  It’s not.

The worst part is he then cites a study to offer further support of the law of “mirrored reciprocation.”  In this study a “researcher sent handwritten Christmas cards to almost six hundred complete strangers … it didn’t take long before these complete strangers started sending responses.  In all he received close to two hundred cards in reply.”

So.  SO.  Peter’s principle of mirrored reciprocation is tested in a study and found to be … less than 33% accurate.  This is in spite of McKeown stating, one paragraph earlier “Send a thank-you note, and you will get one back” (emphasis mine).  Perhaps he should’ve read one more paragraph into his book and revised his statement to be “Send THREE thank-you note and you will get one back.  Probably.”

Yeah, I guess I’ve made my point

So the structure of the book is weak.  The structure is dozens of individual pearls of wisdom that are at times only loosely related.

Also, the pearls of wisdom are weak.  That’s kind of the whole book, so I don’t think I need to keep going with what I didn’t like.

Read This Instead

So I would skip this book if I were you.  Instead, let me recommend some books that he touched on, but didn’t do enough with to be useful.  If you read these books, instead of an inkling of a larger truth, you’ll just get the larger truth.

• Essentialism — Yeah, even though I didn’t like effortless, essentialism is still great and a book I’d recommend for anyone who finds themselves with too much to do and too little time
• Man’s search for meaning — he brought it up, sort of, but you’d be better off reading the real book
• Getting Things Done — David Allen’s book about “stress free productivity” tells you how to actually do the thing in the subtitle using a structure and progression that makes sense.  *cough*
• Read one of: Personal Kansan, Making Work Visible or Scrum: The Art of doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
• Read a book about the Toyota Way (There are lots)

Now you may be saying to yourself “Hold on — you have to read five books instead of one?  I’m just going to read this one!

Please don’t.  If you didn’t read the above let me use an artful metaphor.

I think what McKeown (and authors in the “see what sticks” genre) are trying to create a sort of sample platter of knowledge.  Here, have a bite of chocolate mousse.  Have a bit of brownie.  Have a bite of cookie.  One small piece of a larger whole, to give you a taste.

But that’s not what happens.  Instead of giving you a slice of the whole thing, which allows you to comprehend what the entire thing would taste like, they only succeed in giving you one ingredient from the dish.  Instead of a bit of cookie, you get a whole mouthful of flour.  Instead of brownie, you get unsweetened cocoa powder.  If someone gave you a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder and said “Here’s part of a brownie” they would be technically correct, but you would not want to try any more of that brownie.

I’m saying some of the stuff he referenced is worth consuming in it’s entirety, but it’s a waste of your time to try ten different philosophies one ingredient at a time.