A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism. Because I liked it so much, I went ahead and listened to the book he wrote right after that, Effortless. In Essentialism, Greg writes about focussing on doing fewer things in a more efficient way. In Effortless, he teaches us how to simplify everything we do. These two books have had an uncanny impact on my stress level. I honestly can’t believe it. 

Right now, I have several long-term projects going on. It’s overwhelming because it seems like I could work all day and never even make a dent in the ‘to do’ list. There were two specific suggestions Greg made that shifted my perspective:

1. 1. 1. Have a finish line for the day. He advocates asking ourselves, What will ‘done’ look like?
      2. Approach tasks with the sense that the job is easy, rather than difficult. He points out how much more uncomplicated things are if we don’t go into them with a defeatist attitude.

Who knew?

This week, before I dug into work for the day, I decided exactly what I was going to accomplish for each project. Once those things were done for each job, I was done. If I had time to do more, I did more. But, all week I was able to walk away from my desk knowing that the most important things for the day had been completed. For someone who thinks that there’s always more that I could and should be doing—this is HUGE!

Several times throughout the book Greg mentions the Navy SEAL saying, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” In a world where I almost always feel like I can’t go fast enough, maybe I just needed a Navy SEAL to tell me that it’s ok for me to be slow. Maybe that was the acceptance I’ve been longing for this whole time. Thanks to the SEALs I have a new lease on life: Slow is the new fast.