Greg Mckeown joined me this week for a speical two-part episode to help answer the question "Do big goals have to be painfully difficult "to count?"
Greg is a speaker, podcast host, and author of the recently released book, Effortless, and he doesn't think your most important goals have to be that difficult at all. In Part 2 of our discussion on how to make the essential things in your life the easiest things, we're picking up right where we left off bringing you more practical ways you can accomplish your goals with minimum stress and maximum value.
Find out more about Greg and his new book, Effortless, at his website. Catch up with his podcast What's Essential.
In this episode:
Josh Shipp's 18 Books Every Teen Should Read Before They Turn 18
Follow Jon on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Order Soundtracks, Jon's newest book available wherever you find quality books!
Greg Mckeown joined me this week for a speical two-part episode to help answer the question "Do big goals have to be painfully difficult "to count?"
Greg is a speaker, podcast host, and author of the recently released book, Effortless, and he doesn't think your most important goals have to be that difficult at all. In Part 2 of our discussion on how to make the essential things in your life the easiest things, we're picking up right where we left off bringing you more practical ways you can accomplish your goals with minimum stress and maximum value.
Find out more about Greg and his new book, Effortless, at his website. Catch up with his podcast What's Essential.
In this episode:
Josh Shipp's 18 Books Every Teen Should Read Before They Turn 18
Follow Jon on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Order Soundtracks, Jon's newest book available wherever you find quality books!
Hey everyone and welcome to the All it takes is a cold podcast the best place in the entire world, including all of Canada, to learn how to build new thoughts, new actions and new results. I'm your host Jon Acuff and today is the conclusion of my interview with Greg McKeown. Bum bum bum! Did that feel dramatic? I hope it felt dramatic. It did to me. We'll jump right into the stunning conclusion in just a minute. But first, today's episode is sponsored by Medi-Share. Have you guys ever had buyer's remorse? You know that feeling of intense regret because the thing you thought you just had to have was only something used once or twice? For me it was the time I bought a really expensive road bike because I thought I was going to get into cycling. I proceeded to hang it on the wall in my garage and feel ashamed for six months. Well, I know some of you are experiencing buyer's remorse right now for something much more frustrating. You know what I'm talking about. It's the healthcare you rushed to get during open enrollment last December. Well, I have some good news for you. You've probably heard me talking about our main sponsor for this podcast, Medi-Share. And these guys have the answer to healthcare buyer's remorse. Check this out, members of Medi-Share save up to 50% or more per month on their health care costs. They say the typical family saves up to $500 per month. And here's the best part, you can become a member at any time. So that means it isn't too late to ditch your buyer's remorse and switch to a more affordable health care that will save you money and help you sleep better at night. If this is your first time you're hearing about Medi-Share, it is the best alternative to health insurance that allows you to share the burden of medical bills, offers access to 900,000 plus health care providers, and has a proven 25 year track record. Plus in addition to saving hundreds per month, as a member of Medi-Share, you will also have access to free telehealth and free telecounseling. You won't find that with any traditional health insurance provider. Guys, it only takes two minutes to see how much you could save. Go investigate that for yourself and your family at Medi-Share.com/Jon. That's Medi-Share.com/Jon. Remember Jon doesn't have an H in it. So it's a M-E-D-I, that's Medi, share, S-H-A-R-E dot com slash J-O-N. Alright, if you want the full Greg bio, listen to Episode 19. But here are the Cliff Notes. Greg McKeown is awesome. His book Essentialism sold more than a million copies. And his new book Effortless, just came out. And it's fantastic. We spoke together last Monday. And here is the second part of that conversation. I'm curious, in the seven years between this book and the last book, did you ever find yourself pushing an upper limit beyond what you wanted? Because what happens when you have a successful book in our space is you got to scale. Right? Like you should have a bigger team, you should be doing these things, you should like you shouldn't you know, there's all these things that you could be doing. You should have 100 staff, you shouldn't You know, did you get tempted to do that, and you had to pull back or were you pretty consistent and going"No for me to create the kind of work I create the kind of ideas I create. The This is an upper limit on this part of my business or this part of what I do?"
Greg McKeown:I had an experience years ago when I was
Jon Acuff:You're always renewing it with freshness. in Steven Covey's office with his staff. And actually the moment, I think I shared this with you off air, but there was a moment when somebody came into the office I was in and just said "Oh, they have an inquir for a keynote is in Washingto DC, what's the fee?" And th y answered the question in fro t of me. And it was like a high fee point. And I just wante to teach and write. I mean, I was still a college student at the time. And I just was like " his, I just want this." If I cou d try and create this. I don' need the whole business. The whole, had Franklin Covey at he time, I don't want Franklin Covey. That feels like a headach, a burden. But if I could ju t do this. A little team, and t en just, just teach. And just a d I don't mind, I'm satisfied o teach the same thing again a d again. I mean, you don't eally ever teach the same thi
Greg McKeown:You are. And so it is never the same thing, but g. You renew it. just don't get bored of teaching the same thing. So that you can you can actually get a message out, get it across the chasm. I mean, and even now, I feel like I'm jumping around now, but I feel like so that was the the unit like that was one boundary for me. I don't want to build the big thing. I just want to be able to figure out how to speak and have a best-selling book. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And related to that. It's like I'm not even sure if now a Essentialism has done what it needs to do. Like even now I'm not bored of it.
Jon Acuff:Yeah, there's still room, there's still tons of room,
Greg McKeown:What I want to happen, what I'm still in for the long run to do is to help it just keep I don't know, has across the chasm already? Maybe it has. I don't know. But like to get to a point where it just goes, this is part of the, I mean it's very presumptuous, but it's like, when what I want is it becomes like somehow a classic. You know, it's like this is, "Hey, if you're going to read 10 books on success, and the like, this is one of them." o to do that you have to be w lling to go out and just quietly steadily for a long journey. Do't get bored of it. Yeah, you've said it, I've said it 100 time. The person listening is the irst time they've ever heard t. So just be willing to be in that engagement. And so that as affected my willingness to ju t I guess one of the reasons I aven't written a book every 8 months, I just wanted to have one idea that lasts 10 years. R ally, I suppose my deepest aspir tions is like it lasts 100 years you know that like, I'm gon, but it's still here. And so ebody just wrote me the nices compliment about Effort ess. I almost like, I almost want to share it with you.
Jon Acuff:Oh, please.
Greg McKeown:I don't know. It feels very presumptuous to share it too. But
Jon Acuff:well, don't I mean, but don't Yeah, if you're worried about their privacy, just say they're from Texas. Texas is so big they won't even know it's them.
Greg McKeown:I love that line! Okay, give me a second here. I won't say who it is, but they're an author. They say"Greetings from Texas," not Texas.
Jon Acuff:Yeah, exactly. Probably. Dallas.
Greg McKeown:"Just finished the new book." They said, "My heavens, it is absolute brilliance." That's what they wrote. And then they but this was the really reason I was sharing it because that's just too much. But they said"Congrats on another book that will outlive us all."
Jon Acuff:Ah, come on,
Greg McKeown:Boom!
Jon Acuff:I love it!
Greg McKeown:There's plenty of people who won't feel that about Effortless. And maybe no one else will feel that about Effortless, just him. But it was such a beautiful sentiment, whether the book is that or not. That's what I want. Yeah, not some big thing, not some flashy thing, but to write in a way that it just outlives us. That's what I'm I'm in for that. I'm in for that all day long.
Jon Acuff:I absolutely love that. You know, in order to be effortless, one of the things you talked about that I loved was chapter three, where it opens with you wearing a full Stormtrooper outfit. You're standing the mirror. You've carried around this idea for 30 years. You know, 30 years before your brother said, "That would be amazing to own a full Stormtrooper outfit." And I feel like in that moment, you say,"Wait a second. Like am I carrying around that old goal essentially, like that I don't really care about anymore?" And it now becomes a catchphrase or what I'd say a soundtrack for you and your wife, where is this a stormtrooper? Talk to somebody who came to this podcast that maybe they've told themselves for 10 years "I should write a book. I should write a book. I should write a book." And maybe that's a stormtrooper for them. How do we let go of some of these things that we think we're supposed to do that maybe we've never stopped to turn and look at them and go, "This is? No! I don't want to own this Stormtrooper outfit. I believed this a long time ago, I kept believing it's time to believe something else."
Greg McKeown:One of my business school professors said that goals are the theory that work. Actually, it's quite a good one liner for this podcast in this theme, but goals are the theory that work. And he was giving both praise and warning. Because the first thing he's saying is like there's so many theories of business school, there's so many theories in universities that are like yeah, and they kind of work, they kind of don't, you know, sometimes they work sometimes no. He's like goals work. When you set goals, when you write them down, especially if you look at them a few times so they become like intentional soundtracks of a different kind for you, they work. They go into you. You start living it out at an unconscious level. And I 100% believe that. And if you want to change the trajectory of your whole life, you will set goals that you don't believe right now. And as I'm riffing on the positive side of goals for a second, I went to a camp. I was asked to do a thing at a Steve Harvey camp for at-risk teenage boys. And he was doing his thing with the with the mothers of the boys, so single moms of these at risk boys. And he just said,"Listen up here." He said "I'm going to tell you how to change your world." He says, you know, very sounds at first, like a very non-essentialist idea, actually. But he grabbed my attention. He said "You write down 400 things that you would dream to do if you could." And then he said "Actually, for all of you here, to be honest, just do 100 because you're never going to get to 400." He said,"What's going to happen is you're going to start the list and you're going to get to like 32. And you're done. You don't even have anything more. That's everything that you have ever wanted to thought about achieving." He said, "You just aren't setting goals boldly enough. Keep going, keep pushing, ask a bigger question, ask it again." And so this is all the the upside of goals. You start setting them and you start reviewing them and reviewing them. At first, they're impossible, then they become improbable. And then they become ah, you know, maybe possible, then eventually doable, and then they start happening. And that changes everything again, because you go, "Well, if that process is possible. If you can go from impossible to done. What else is impossible that could be done?"
Jon Acuff:They're in a candy shop. You feel like a kid in a candy shop and you're like, does anybody else know this? You feel like you've, like you want to you feel like Tim Robbins at the end of Shawshank. Like you're in the river. It's raining on you, you take your shirt off, and you're like, "What? Does anybody else know goals work?" I love that. That's exactly how I feel.
Greg McKeown:So that's all the positive side. And I'm a huge believer in that. And I've taken that challenge. I've never got to 400 items, because I found the same thing happened, you get to about 50, you're about done. But I've kept going and kept going and just added, I just add ludicrous things to it as whenever I come across things that are so interesting. Ah, that would be cool. And I put them there. This is all a perhaps list and I'm not committed to all these things. But let them expand. That's the good side. But the dark side, right, the dark side of goals is that they can live on in you forever. When you don't know they are. So they've outlived their usefulness. And of course, it's not just goals that outlived their usefulness. The Stormtrooper was a goal. I mean, I didn't know it was a goal. I never wrote it down as a goal. But something in my mind was like "Must do this cool thing. Must get a movie-level quality, you know, suit one day." And then as I'm on the edge of actually being able to do it, I'm like, "I have no interest in this. I don't want this anymore. I'm not 10 anymore. It's past its best by date. So I think reviewing the goals of your life every so often, and just asking, Is it a stormtrooper? Do I really want this? We better want what we really want. Because often those things come to pass. And maybe that isn't the thing you want anymore. You've got to reevaluate it.
Jon Acuff:I think a comparison to that is when somebody buys a beach house, and they love the story of the beach house, but not the reality. So they said"Someday that's what I'll have. I'll have a beach house," but none of the reality match what they really care about, and they get to the beach house and they're like, "I have to fix it every time I'm here. Only my relatives get to use it. It's stressful. The ocean is trying to destroy me in every second of the ocean's day But I told myself when I was 18 or 22 or whatever, someday I'll have a beach house." I always think about that with when it comes to is that a stormtrooper?
Greg McKeown:Yes.
Jon Acuff:I'm curious. I asked a leader once, "Why do influencers, leaders, business owners, why do they sometimes kind of fall apart? Why do they combust?" And he said it's two things. And he studied this. He said it's two things. And one I knew one was surprising said one is they're isolated. That felt obvious to me that even the best leader makes terrible mistakes when they're isolated. Like a phrase I always say is leaders who can't be questioned end up doing questionable things. But the second one he said was they don't have a life giving hobby. Which related to me to your like, "Can it be fun? Can it be rewarding?" And he said their entire identity becomes wrapped up in the thing they're doing? There's no life giving hobby, where they're learning new things that aren't related at all. So I'm curious for you, what are some of your hobbies? Like swimming sounds like it's one. It sounds like there's joy there. Like what are some other life giving hobbies for you?
Greg McKeown:Well, my children are my hobby. And that's for real. My best friend growing up Sam Bridgeshot used to say that. And it was just such a good soundtrack to absorb myself and to go, "Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to pour my creative energy into this." It's not just something I am responsible for. It's not just a chore. It's not just something that's important, but okay, we're gonna get through it. Like, what if this is a hobby. I'm going to learn how to do this better. To build relationships with them, I'm going to have fun with them. We're going to go on trips together. I would travel, whe travel was a thing back then, would have maybe 80% of the tim I'd have one of my children come come with me. And we would just that I thought that'd be s good for them. And it turns ou that it was so good for me Because what it did is it turne these very routine trips, right Taxi, hotel, airport, repea into an adventure. We would, we l where can we eat? Where s fun? Where's interesting? Let s have an experience. Okay, l t's turn this into a ritu l that's rewarding in and o itself. Let's go, we would end up doing that we always end up going to some museum, I would never
Jon Acuff:No, when you travel alone, you're never like when somebody says, "Oh, you went to Seattle, what did you see?" I always say, "I saw the Marriott lobby. And then I saw the room. And then like, that's the circle I did." I never am going exploring. But if I had my daughter with me, or one of my daughters, that makes sense.
Greg McKeown:That's what, that changed it for me. And so I remember saying, in fact, years ago, when my children were little, and I had them with me, and I said, in this, in the keynote, I said, "You know, while they're children yeah we love it now. But teenagers, that'll be that'll be a rough ride." And someone came up to me afterwards. And just they just wanted to talk to me about that comment. And they just said, that basically, they said, they didn't have these words, but they just said, that is a soundtrack. Even though you're joking about it as a soundtrack. It doesn't have to be, you could just have an amazing relationship with your teenagers. Because that's, that's what's happening with me right now. It has happened. And I that really, like made an impression on me. And I thought, well, what if it could be great? What if teenagers could be terrific?
Jon Acuff:I think it can. I think parents over like, we do a broken soundtrack when we said, when we say "Oh, it's gonna be the worst," like, because people will ask me, do your kids hate you yet? And I'll say, No, like, what a terr Like, no, they're, like, I love my teenage daughters. One just went to the prom, and we're, you know, doing all these new things. So I think that that's such a weird thing that we do when we predict it has to be that way.
Greg McKeown:I want to be sensitive to the people that are having a rough time right now. Teenagers can be very, very tough. But I also want to say, speak the other soundtrack of like, it can be great. Right now, I have four basically teenagers, 18 to 12, and I'm just genuinely amazed by them. And I love to be with them. We love doing things together. We love swimming. We love playing tennis together. It's hardly a day right now where my son isn't like tapping on me, "Hey, can we go play." We don't play for like a long time. But we'll play even between events, I'll just go and play for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And when you get outside, we just get to play and it's like, really enjoyable to be with him. And he's growing into someone who's, it's just so that he I find him so funny. I find it entertaining, I find him insightful, wiser than me even now. I find some things he'll be like, well, that's just good judgment there. And that's just like better than I'm the way I'm seeing it. And certainly wiser than I was at his age. And so I think, you know, that's, that is definitely a life giving hobby for me.
Jon Acuff:One of the things one of my daughters did that reminded me of your book about figuring out kind of the rules of the game and then playing, you know, understanding what, you know, what really mattered. And you told the story about a friend in school who was good at that and would say, "Okay, here's what I'm going to do." And then you would kind of overwork on some things that you felt like, maybe they were the wrong things overworked on. So I loved that, that thinking of Okay, well, how do we get the greatest results with the minimum effort? That's something you talk about a lot. I've got a few other questions. So this summer, one of the things we're doing with our daughters is where their summer job is to read 15 amazing books. There's 15 books that we're picking out there, a lot of them are fiction, but if you were going to put a book on a, "Hey, if I could get every teenager to read or every young adult to read these books, this kind of education," what would be a book that you put on there?
Greg McKeown:Oh, I mean, one answer I have to that is there's a Josh Shipp is a teenage whisperer.
Jon Acuff:Oh, I know Josh. Yeah, we're friends.
Greg McKeown:I'm so happy to hear that. And, and he made a list of like, 18 books that every 18 year old should read before their 18th birthday. And I'm trying to remember what, what he puts on it. And what what I would put on it. I'm gonna pause here for a second, s I try and come up with a go d answer.
Jon Acuff:We've put on things like Tale of Two Cities. Count of Monte Cristo. My Antonia. You know, books like that. So I, you know, you can answer the question that way. The other way you could answer a book question, because I'm curious is what's the book you've given away more than your own? I've probably given the War of Art by Steven Pressfield away more than any other book. When somebody is stuck creatively, I say, oh, this book really helped me. What's a book that in your life, you've given away more than other books?
Greg McKeown:I'm going to give a few because I just don't have one that I think should work here. But I think that John Adams by Michael McCullough, no David McCullough, excuse me is terrific. I just called up to speak to his wife. Dave is not well anymore. And it was so nice to just spend some time talking with her but just to thank her for him and for what she has done to enable him to write so well for so long. And he wrote into all of these extraordinary Pulitzer Prize winning books just from like a tiny little office, tiny, on it on a typewriter in the back of his, you know, just in his house in Boston. He wasn't a trained historian when he began all of this. He's not, he doesn't know anything about any of the subjects he writes about before he decides to write about them.
Jon Acuff:Really?
Greg McKeown:Nothing. He just goes "Oh so intrigued about this story, what happened there?" And he goes, and he always wants the primary sources. So he's actually going and reading the journals of the people that were there, not the book about the journals, or the people that were there. Just writes the stories he has. I mean, that I love his writing. I love there's a book that he wrote, try see if I can remember the name now.
Jon Acuff:I'll do subtitles, Greg is looking at books right now on his shelf. He's turned his shoulder. This is like subtitles of a movie. He's looking, there's no ladder in his, in his library that I can tell. But I feel like there might be like a ladder on the other side of the library. We're seeing the smaller part of the library. It's probably near the tennis court that he just referred to. So it's hard to tell.
Greg McKeown:I can't
Jon Acuff:He's laughing because I'm making comical statements.
Greg McKeown:So it's a, it's a, it's an, a book that he wrote about, like essays that he and speeches that he gave about the spirit of America, it might even be called Spirit of America. But David McCullough.
Jon Acuff:Was that 1776?
Greg McKeown:No. 1776 is a terrific book. And that's just literally about that year. So it's not just about the revolution, it's that year. And there's another, you know, terrific book.
Jon Acuff:Yeah, it's called the spirit, It's The American Spirit. American,
Greg McKeown:The American Spirit, by David McCullough. Love that. I mean, you could write, just read about just anything he wrote. But I love the Wright Brothers by him as well. So those are three books just by him that I think are
Jon Acuff:That's amazing. That's amazing. terrific. I think Boy in the Boat should be on the list. If you read that story, Boys in the Boat is about these, these, these students who eventually go to the Berlin Olympic Games, and win gold is their story. Most of them actually come from working class backgrounds. And in a way, it's about the struggle of their
Greg McKeown:And the others, the others are probably even journey. And yet, if you read it, you find they don't seem stressed and burned out in the way that so many people do in today's society. So they have achieved this unbelievable thing, even while they have a job on the side, they may be further ahead on that curve. Because that that's their whole going to school, and they're preparing to go to the Olympics. And it isn't a strain. And it isn't like that. And I think part of the reason is because they just, when they're doing on thing, they're doing that thing when they're doing the nex thing they're doing that thing there's a certain peace abou it. And then there's anothe example of effortlessness i that story that I think i relevant, which is they ge into, there's a name for what i is, when you're when you're on rowing team, and you get in th swing, and I think the word is swing. It becomes everyone is in complete sync. And it is effortless. It's just complet ly smooth. And so there there re all sorts of essentialist nd effortless elements to that tory. And I would recommend hat book too. My children read e dlessly. My eldest who just pplied to university, I said when she was applying, I said"Look, you should just write do n at least somewhere, all t e books that you've read, y u know, since being 12 years ol," so I don't elementary ooks. And then she stopped at 00. curriculum. It's just reading, reading, reading, reading, and they just now they've become nobody likes a book pusher. And now they're book pushers to me.
Jon Acuff:I try not to do that, but it's hard not to. So I've got four last rapid fire questions. Number one, how do you come down from intense moments? So you're speaking on stage, you know, how do you come down from that? I'm always curious about that. Conan O'Brien in the documentary, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, there's a scene where he's just performed at Radio City Music Hall, and he's looking out at the crowd in the streets. And he's like, "I'm gonna go down there for more!" and his manager is like, please just go back to your bedroom like, and he says,"You think I go from that to reading a Kindle? You're crazy." And he goes back into the street to continue the kind of adrenaline high. How do you as somebody who gets to do really fun things that are intense come down from that?
Greg McKeown:Yeah, Seinfeld talks about this, but he has to after he goes on stage, he, no one should be around him for the next hour. Because he has to shrink back into a normal sized person. Oh, that's so good. And that's what you're talking about is that hour of transition approximately, is a quite an uncomfortable experience because you're no longer doing the quite almost inhuman thing of standing in front of hundreds of perhaps 1000s of people entertaining, educating, competing with their phones for their attention. So you get to try to do all that.
Jon Acuff:You're up against every app, every app is fighting you.
Greg McKeown:Exactly. And so that's highly intense. But of course, for those that love to do it highly, you know, adrenaline driving experience. What I found is helpful is to, I will go for a walk, like go for like a swift walk. Or sometimes hotels will even have like bikes that they're renting and stuff, depending on the location, and I will try and just get out and be physical. So it just kind of gets you, you know, all that energy gives you something for it to do. I find that really helpful. Sometimes, although I can't always do it because of the adrenaline experience you're describing. But sometimes I will try and take a nap. Like, just don't try and go from that energy to like, "Oh, I'm going to write or I'm going to respond to an email or I'm going to go do" it's like that, those don't match. But if I can just lie down for a bit. Sometimes that will work and I'll just, I'll just nap and then once you would be it's like you returned back as a as Bruce Banner, you're like, Okay, okay.
Jon Acuff:Chains are all torn. You know that your shirts in tatters. You like what happened to my thighs? Second question, when you're in writing mode, how long are you writing each day? And where do you write? Kind of a two parter. So is it hours? Is it pages?
Greg McKeown:I write here, right where this is happening, which is an office. I used to have a different, be in a different house or office outside of the house. It was small, but I loved it. I felt like it was writing haven or templo even, I love that. And the how much and where has evolved. It has to be early in the morning, for me. That's far easier. And I've learned that basically, the goal is to do a couple of hours and to try and write two pages. And if I can write two pages a day, it's like super high speed work. And what I learned, especially when I was writing Effortless, was if I did three hours, in the third hour, I could produce more, but not a full additional page. So that became, that's like diminishing returns. But then if I went further than that four or 5, 6, 7, 8 hours, oh, yeah, that's like negative returns. I am making the manuscript as a whole worse than if I had not written that book that day. And I better stop. That is my like, that is the tell. I'm messing with stuff. I'm going back to the stuff I wrote in the beginning."Well, what if I just did it this way? Oh, I've got a good idea." And you just can blow so much up. You cause so much trouble and are not to be trusted. Yeah.
Jon Acuff:Yeah. And I think that's helpful to people. Because I think people do think, okay, they expect a writer to say 10 hours a day. I do 10 hours a day, and get up at 2am. Like, I send you funny things that I see where people post like, I get up at 3am and do burpees. And I love that. That answer I think will help people. Third question. Effortless is probably around, eyeballing it, 55,000 words. 50-55,000 words. How many words did you have to write to get to that 55?
Greg McKeown:That's a good question. I think I probably wrote four or five times that amount. So I
Jon Acuff:Quarter mil, as the kids say in the streets?
Greg McKeown:That's what the kids are saying, I guess.
Jon Acuff:Yeah, that's what they're saying. A lot of street youths are saying that. That's how they would say it.
Greg McKeown:I've never thought about it that way. And that is interesting. But it's like, you know that, you know, maybe that's the right number. It might be more, I don't know, I just the only thing I want to add to that is that I wanted Effortless to have less words in it than Essentialism. I didn't care how much less and again, it was just an upper bound. It was just a forcing function to say, don't write some big, voluminous book. Because you can, because somebody will never say no. And so that just helped keep me, keep me tight. But I don't know, I don't know if Effortless is a great book. But I know it's better than the books that I didn't publish.
Jon Acuff:But you know you put in great work too. Like, that's the thing, you control the thing you can control. You put you know, great, not impossible effort, but you put effort into it that to you equals this is me giving the best of what I'm capable of.
Greg McKeown:Yeah, on this subject, at this moment, the moment I finished that book, that was the best that I could do. And the great thing was I had a great team around me. The editor, same editor, love my editor. And then I had them, someone helping me the research, Jonathan Cohen was such a great member of Team Effortless. And working together with them was effortless. That was I loved that experience. When we were in there together. I just think about like Harry Potter. It's like, it's like you go in and like Jonathan will be in there bringing a story that I'd asked him to go research and bring it in. And then Callie will be editing something that I've been writing and then I'd get to work on something else. It was pretty magical because it's in a Google doc and you could see it all will be worked on at the same time.
Jon Acuff:I think I stepped on something important you said. You said it's a better book than all the books you didn't publish. Is that how you said it is?
Greg McKeown:That is right.
Jon Acuff:That's great. That is great. I love that. Okay, last
Greg McKeown:I've been to Nashville. I've spoken in question. When do you think you'll move to Nashville? I just assume at some point everyone moves to Nashville. You guys already have that on a calendar Is that in you know, have yo and your wife already pla ned? You're looking at ho ses? Because when you move from California to Nashville, yo get to ball out. Like I just ant to be upfront. Whatever you ell in North Malibu, you will ave an estate. Like you're g nna have to name the property. L ke I don't know if that's some hing you do. Like England, th y name estates. Like you're Bri ish, you could name it some anor or something. I'm just, th t's what we have to offer. So i that in the cards? Like, I'm just curi Nashville. I don't remember what it was for now. But I loved Nashville. I love Nashville, which is I'm avoiding your question.
Jon Acuff:I'm gonna write that down as a yes. We're gonna take that as a yes.
Greg McKeown:Good. Put it in the same category as McConaughey, you know, likes Soundtracks. He loves soundtracks and I'm coming to Nashville. They're both true. You can probably buy like Tim McGraw's lake house or I mean, I'm just gonna say it's gonna be nice. You should, like make me jealous by like, make me hungry. You should send me what the equivalent would be. I'd love that.
Jon Acuff:Exactly. I think it's funny talking about the effort I was on a podcast two or three months ago. It's when I first you put in the work the wanting to have a 10 year. I guarantee that on some of the podcasts you've done, people said, "Are you writing a new book?" Like, it's so funny how fast we want to move from and like, that's crazy I mean, and we're alway working on ideas. We're alway working on ideas, but dude, you started to do a few podcasts. So the book is not even out like book came out Tuesday. An somebody was like, "So um, Gre, tell us what's the new book ab ut? What's the next book?" ou're like, "This one's bare Th ink is barely dry," they're l ke, "Yeah, b for a while. And people still want to know that question. I had a friend who was a juggler. He's like, award winning. Like, career juggler. Does he have to beat other jugglers to do that? How do you how do you win awards? Is there competition?
Greg McKeown:It's like you out survive people, right?
Jon Acuff:Ah, yeah, it's like Highlander. You steal their powers.
Greg McKeown:You just like keep doing it. When everyone else gets burned, burned out. They're like, "I gotta find myself a different career."
Jon Acuff:They get carpal tunnel. And I mean, there's so many injuries that can take out a juggler,
Greg McKeown:You know, so like, if you can do three, three, I can juggle three balls, right? And as soon as somebody to three, you say "Oh, can you do four, five," and this guy can do like eight. But as soon as he does eight, all anyone wants to knows if he can do nine. It's like we're so easily "And we're done with that. What have you got new for me?"
Jon Acuff:Yeah, there's a book series Mitford book series by Jan Karon. It's a book about a small town based on Blowing Rock. The two interesting things, she had to move out of Blowing Rock, she wrote a book series about her favorite small town, it got so successful, she could no longer live there. Because so many tourists came and would be like, knocking on her front door. So that's the one interesting thing. The second thing is she said people would come up to her book signings and go, "I loved your book, when's the next one?" and she'd say "It took you three hours to read it. It took me three years to write it. Like we're just at a different. We're running it. We're running at a different pace." Like I'm sorry.
Greg McKeown:That's a great line. And that of course is the problem is that once they're done reading it, they're like,"Okay, good. That's it." Now, I will say this, I feel different about this. The answer to this though, than I did before Effortless. I think it's random. But I do know what I want to write next. And I'm very clear about it. And I wasn't I wasn't at first initially. So I think it's very, it's going to be different. I'm hoping that I'm going to get a lot of time to be able to write it because it's like, but I shouldn't even be talking about this.
Jon Acuff:I know, I know. We'll keep it on the wraps. Well, Greg, this has been awesome. So tell people where they can find you your work your book. Where you know if I want to know more about Greg, where am I going?
Greg McKeown:Come join the What's Essential podcast, right? Like just go subscribe and be part of it. You get to hear this amazing author of Soundtracks come and do a great episode. Come and listen to it.
Jon Acuff:Plus Matthew McConaughey.
Greg McKeown:Plus Matthew McConaughey and learn about whether he is in fact going to be wanting to run as the governor of Texas. We got on that subject.
Jon Acuff:It's a big question.
Greg McKeown:That subject and in many other interesting subjects. It actually was, it was an interesting episode because we did sort of the thing talking about his book, Greenlights and all that and that was I liked that. He is an Essentialist in lots of ways. I know that because he had this line. Listen, this Essentialist line, he said, "Lean horse, long ride." And that's what he said. But then it got to this point, we did a second episode because it got to this point right at the end of the episode. I asked him a question I was like"What's essential for you that you're underinvesting in?" And I thought the screen had frozen, it was like 10 seconds. He didn't say anything.
Jon Acuff:He's just staring out like a Lincoln commercial.
Greg McKeown:Staring almost at me, slightly off, but just and I thought I don't want to interrupt because if he is thinking I don't want to. And then finally he just says "Being a leader." And that launched us into a completely different conversation, which was like a coaching conversation. It wasn't we weren't doing a podcast anymore. It was like coaching. And we went through and I was asking question after question, trying to understand what he meant by that, what he's gonna do about that, and how he's going to proceed and so on. And it was a really I thought it was an amazing moment. So people should listen to your episode with you. And then the Matthew McConaughey episodes and that's where they should find themselves.
Jon Acuff:And Effortless is everywhere books are sold. Do you read the audiobook? Is that you on the audiobook?
Greg McKeown:It is. For good or ill.
Jon Acuff:No, that's good. You have a British accent. I've told you many times you have a leg up against us Yanks.
Greg McKeown:It's my only saving grace.
Jon Acuff:That is not true. That is not true. Well, Greg, thank you for joining me. I love this conversation. I can't wait for people to hear it.
Greg McKeown:Jon, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Jon Acuff:Alright, that concludes our first ever two-part interview. I feel pretty good about it. I felt like it was enough content in both parts. It felt like they work together. That was a good two parter. That's, that was good. I don't know if I'll do more in the future. But that one felt like it was worth it. Thank you for listening today. If you love this episode, please leave a review. The reviews you've been leaving have been awesome. See you next week. And remember, all it takes is a goal.
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