--- ## Highlights Not everything has to be so hard. Getting to the next level doesn’t have to mean chronic exhaustion. Making a contribution doesn’t have to come at the expense of your mental and physical health. (Location 190) This book is organized into three simple parts: Part I reintroduces you to your Effortless State. Part II shows how to take Effortless Action. Part III is about achieving Effortless Results. (Location 215) Think of an NBA player stepping up to take a free throw. First, they get into “the zone.” They find the “dot” on the free throw line, dribble the ball a few times: a ritual to help them get completely focused. You can almost see them clearing their heads—letting go of all emotions, blocking out the noise of the crowd. This is what I call the Effortless State. (Location 218) They try without trying, fluid and smooth in their execution. This is Effortless Action. (Location 222) George Eliot, “What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?” (Location 267) When you return to your Effortless State, you feel lighter, in the two senses of the word. First, you feel less heavy—unburdened. You aren’t as weighed down. Suddenly you have more energy. But lighter also means more full of light. When you remove the burdens in your heart and the distractions in your mind, you are able to see more clearly. You can discern the right action and light the right path. (Location 310) What if the biggest thing keeping us from doing what matters is the false assumption that it has to take tremendous effort? What if, instead, we considered the possibility that the reason something feels hard is that we haven’t yet found the easier way to do it? (Location 350) instead of asking, “How can I tackle this really hard but essential project?,” we simply inverted the question and asked, “What if this essential project could be made easy?” (Location 365) When I’d failed, it was rarely because I hadn’t tried hard enough, it was because I’d been trying too hard. (Location 386) Asking the question “What if this could be easy?” is a way to reset our thinking. It may seem almost impossibly simple. And that’s exactly why it works. (Location 410) We think that to be extraordinarily successful we have to do the things that are hard and complicated. Instead, we can look for opportunities that are highly valuable and simple and easy. (Location 455) Do you have any items like this, living rent-free in your mind? Outdated goals, suggestions, or ideas that snuck into your brain long ago and took up permanent residence? Mindsets that have outlived their usefulness but have been part of you for so long, you barely even notice them? (Location 630) Do not do more today than you can completely recover from today. Do not do more this week than you can completely recover from this week. (Location 826) Why the hot shower? Recent sleep science found that participants who used water-based passive body heating—also known as a bath—before bed slept sooner, longer, and better. (Location 890) “What’s amazing is that in a 90-minute nap, you can get the same [learning] benefits as an eight-hour sleep period,” the researcher says. (Location 902) The recipe for taking an Effortless Nap is as follows: Notice when your fatigue has gotten to the point that you feel it is real work to concentrate. Block out light and noise using an eye mask and a noise canceller or earplugs. Set an alarm for a desired time. As you try to fall asleep, banish all thoughts about what you “could be doing.” Your to-do’s will all still be there when you wake up. Only now, you’ll be able to get them done faster, and with greater ease. (Location 914) There is no such thing as an effortless relationship. But there are ways we can make it easier to keep a relationship strong. We don’t need to agree with the other person on everything. But we do need to be present with them, to really notice them, to give them our full attention—maybe not always, but as frequently as we can. Being present is, as Eckhart Tolle has said, “ease itself.” (Location 1032) We can help people in our lives do the same by putting aside our own opinions, advice, or judgment completely, by putting the other person’s truth above our own. The greatest gift we can offer to others is not our skill or our money or our effort. It is simply us. None of us have infinite reserves of focus and attention to give away. But in the Effortless State, it becomes far easier to give the gift of our intentional focus to the people and things we really care about. (Location 1075)