Effortless · Aperio book club
By Enoye Uwa
At our recent Aperio book club meeting, we discussed Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most by Greg McKeown, a follow-up to McKeown’s New York Times Best Seller, Essentialism.
At its core, Effortless is a call to question how we’ve been starting and completing tasks in our professional lives. Laid out in three parts—Effortless State, Effortless Action, and Effortless Results—Effortless offers advice for making essential tasks more enjoyable to reduce the feeling of burnout.
Burnout is not a new term; in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) categorized burnout as a syndrome that results from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Since the WHO published its findings, employees worldwide have had to navigate through a global health pandemic that has triggered layoffs and instilled a culture of fear in those who feel the pressure to overwork.
Fundraisers and changemakers who are dedicated to the social good experience burnout and often experience feelings of perceived failure as the demand for nonprofit aide has only increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our desire to make a substantial impact on causes close to us can leave us overworked and overwhelmed. Combined with the demands of the job—the constant need to attain new donors and raise more money—these pressures can take a toll on nonprofit professionals.
It doesn’t help that our culture glorifies burnout as a measure of success and self-worth. The implicit message is that if we aren’t perpetually exhausted, we must not be doing enough.
-Greg McKeown
This book is in no way a cure-all but offers actionable strategies for approaching everyday tasks more effortlessly.
Part 1: Effortless state
Hard work is, culturally, believed to be the cornerstone of professional success. As a result, many of us feel the need to overwork to the point of delirium. Exhaustion and the attendant difficulty focusing and functioning at work erode our ability to find joy in our work. To combat this, McKeown challenges us to enter into an effortless state.
The goal here is to lighten your life by doing the activities that recharge you and bring you joy so that you can carry this joy into your professional tasks. This “lighter” state is one where you are physically rested, emotionally unburdened, and mentally energized. You are completely aware, alert, and able to focus on what matters most.
For fundraisers, recharging in the nonprofit space can look like reminding yourself why you got involved in this line of work in the first place. It could look like volunteering your time or networking with other professionals and likeminded individuals who have been where you are; allowing you to bounce your pain points and ideas off peers who have been where you are and finding validation for your feelings.
McKeown also offers readers an exercise to combat complaining by saying something you are grateful for. This may not give you the instant serotonin hit you are looking for, but with good practice, it can strengthen your capacity for positive thinking as a first option instead of focusing on the negative. Some things you can be grateful for are:
The opportunity to change lives! You get to work in a space where you lead with your heart and there is so much potential to make a lasting impact on the lives of so many.
The generosity of donors can put you in a very good headspace. When you encounter a donor who has the means and the desire to donate, as a fundraiser, you are encouraged and elated to help.
The support of volunteers can remind you of the compassion of others. People who donate their time and their non-financial resources are just as important as the financial donors. As a sector long known for being financially strapped, volunteers are important for a variety of functions; from events to daily operations, seeing people show up with smiles on their faces and a can-do attitude can remind you of the mission.
Part 2: Effortless action
“Past a certain point, more effort doesn’t produce better performance. It sabotages our performance.”
– Greg McKeown
Effortless action means accomplishing more by doing less. By pacing yourself from the start to the completion of your day, you may find that you are able to build healthier time management practices without even trying! McKeown offers—yet again—a great exercise for daily tasks. Making a “Done for the Day” list can help sort tasks into two categories:
If I complete this task today, will it leave me feeling satisfied?
If I do not complete this task today, will it haunt me all night?
If the answer to these two questions is yes, then that item needs to be added to the “Done for the Day” list. This simplifies and organizes your day so that you can accomplish your tangible goals without feeling overwhelmed by them.
Part 3: Effortless results
Effortless results are what happen when you stay in an effortless state and develop an effortless action plan. This final portion of the book lays out not just how you can get the results you have been preparing for but also how you can get consistent results every time. McKeown is steadfast in offering preventative measures as a means of achieving residual results.
Teach others to teach
When you teach others, it is a good way to learn as well. The thought of being used as a teacher can increase engagement and help us to focus more intently. Being fundraisers and working in the consulting space, we are often looked at as guides and vessels of knowledge. The more we guide our clients, the more we ourselves learn about the industry.
Automate essential tasks
Automating essential tasks can give you back a lot of time you are desperately missing! The most essential tasks should be the easiest and most effortless, but they can also be the biggest time wasters. Nonprofit databases are essential to the sector and involves storing a lot of information- such as donors and funding. Rather than keeping a running list of this information or searching for this information on your own, there are many resources that can conduct wealth screenings and segmenting for you—so be sure to utilize them.
He gives the example of a broken desk drawer that had been an irritant for two years, but no one thought enough of the problem to fix it, only to get annoyed whenever they had to interact with the drawer. The drawer ended up being fixed after two minutes and brought up the question: “Why do so many of us put up with problems—big and small—for so much longer than we have to?”
The solution to this is to not only find fixes to small problems while they are still small, but to also take stock of what problems you may have in your own processes that could be handled today, as opposed to two years from now.
Effortless offers actionable advice for making the most essential activities the easiest ones, so you can achieve the results you want—without burning out. McKeown offers readers the lasting advice that “the effortless way isn’t the lazy way. It’s the smart way. It may even be the only way. Not every hard thing in life can be made easy. But we can make it easier to do more of what matters most.”
Enoye Uwa
Enoye serves as Coordinator, Business Optimization at Aperio. She specializes in operations, financial reporting, organizing, interpersonal relationships, and vendor management.
