Effortless Action

Imagine this. Two dudes, let's call them Joe and Kurt, staring at a garage full of junk. There's a dusty treadmill from 2006, a box labeled random wires, a half built IKEA shelf, and somewhere a toolbox buried under 17ft of holiday decorations. They both agree it's finally time to clean it out. But after an hour of just staring and sighing, they give up and go get tacos instead. Why? Because they had no idea what Dunn even looked like. Were they organizing, tossing stuff, building a man cave? No one knew. Now imagine this. Same garage, same dudes, but this time they define done as clear enough space to park the car. Boom. Target locked. The first step, just move the bikes. Then they throw out one broken lamp. They stop trying to alphabetize every screw and just keep tossing junk. And before they know it, the car fits. Now that's effortless action. Today we're breaking down how defining what done looks like, making it easy to start, simplifying the process and letting momentum carry you, can help you take action without feeling overwhelmed. Whether you're clearing a garage, starting a business, or just trying to write that one email, you'll leave today with a game plan to make progress without the grind. I'm Curtis and my pal over there now thinking about cleaning his garage is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Hello, Kurt. Cleaning my garage, cleaning my office, cleaning my car. There's a lot on my mind about that. But that's almost a whole lesson just in that opening. Dude, I like it. I like it. I can't wait to talk about this.

Yeah, I gave you the whole topic and the points we're gonna look at. This was all based on you, Joe, and your recommendation. I bought that book effortless by Greg McGowan after you told me during one of our episodes. And I read the whole thing in a couple weeks.

It's pretty good, isn't it?

You know, I heard your voice in my head. You're like a earworm the whole time reading that book. Is that intentional? It's as if it's your, like, not Bible. Am I reading you wrong or what?

Yeah, I've read a lot of Greg McGowan stuff. It starts off with essentialism back 10 years or so ago. And then he just released Effortless, which is a Greek companion to essentialism. And this is the way I want to live my life, quite honestly. So this is why his philosophy is echoed in what you hear from me a lot of times. Because we do need to simplify our lives. We even need to Simplify, Simplifying, Right. Because when we try to. When we try to minimize things. Just in your opening that. It's so true, dude. When we try to minimize things. Okay, I'm gonna minimize my garage. And instead of understanding what done is, we go down this path of, okay, well, what do I do with all these little tiny screws? And what do I do? How do I organize this? And how do. And all we're doing is we're pushing stuff from one pile to another. And those piles may be a little more organized, but we're really not making progress because we're not really defining what done looks like. And that's what I'm excited for this episode.

Yeah. As you're talking about that, I'm thinking he does give an example of a lot of things. That thing that you want to do that you're procrastinating about, it might even be subconscious or you don't know why you're not starting, but there's something, a little obstacle, and it could be really simple thing that you're making out to be a big thing to get started. Like, you don't know how to do something. And when you realize. I had an example of this recently at work where I was going down the wrong path. I was making it a lot harder than it was. I said, all right, tomorrow morning I'm watching this YouTube video, and before you know it, I'm like, oh, the light bulb went on. This is what I need to do. I'm gonna just follow this path. And before you know it, by the end of the day, I've got it figured out.

Yeah. Projects are like that. What's harder is kind of life changing issues. Things that when you really want to go down a different path in your life and you're afraid of. Of how to do it, what to do, you're not. Afraid's not really the best word. It. You just don't know what you know where you want to go. You just don't know where to start. Because it seems. It seems so overwhelming or it seems like such a Herculean task. Yeah. You just don't know. You just don't know where to start. Yeah.

Well, this episode was of course inspired by Joe telling me about the book. But then he goes out of nowhere and covers one of the chapters out of the book last week. Go slow to go fast. And I was like, boy, that looks really familiar. When I saw he was doing the notes for the episode. And I was like, that son of a gun, he just. I don't know if he knows he did this or he was intentionally doing this. And I talked to you later. I don't think you even knew you were doing a chapter from the book Effortless.

No, no, I don't. It just, it's there, like everything that we garner when we read or we study or we're. We have a certain mindset, that stuff just comes up. I'm not trying to steal from you, Mr. McGowan. You've had an impact on me, that's for sure.

Well, there's three sections to the book. I really like this one, Effortless Action. Like I said, Joe gave us the fifth one. Go slow to go fast. Go listen to that one if you want to hear more about that. But Joe, I took on the four other parts of this section of the book and I think they're fantastic. We've always talked about, hey, how do you want to make progress? Take action. And even better, how about effortless action? That's a fantastic two words put together.

So when you're reading the book, when you read this book about effortless, this section about effortless action, how would you define effortless action?

Yeah, when things just seem to be going in a flow where everything just seems to click, I think. And these points, I know I'm. I do these pretty good. You always got to remind yourself when you're not. When you're. I'll still bang my head against the wall a little bit before I realize that I need to be thinking about these four tips we're going to talk about.

Yeah, let's not be deceived. Work is required to make change. So effortless doesn't mean no work. Effortless doesn't mean that there's no action required. It means it feels natural. And you, like you said, you get into a flow and before you know it, you look up and you're done, as if you put no effort into it whatsoever. But let's not be deceived. There's work to be done, there's action to be taken.

Yeah. And how can we get it started and get into that flow? So let's talk about. The first one is called Define. I love this one because I really learned this through my software development. It's part of agile development. It's called what does done look like? Or we'll say, what is the definition of done? And as a team, we talk about it and review it. So in my scenario with Joe and I working on our garage, we didn't know what done looked like and we never got started. We went off and got tacos.

By the way, let's be, let's make something very clear. We don't have a garage together.

Yes.

We'Ve never even eaten tacos together. But I understand your point.

If you came over to my house and we looked at my garage, we might end up going doing tacos if we didn't define what done looked like.

I'll send you a picture. I'll bet your mind we'll have a little contest here. I'll bet your mind's worse.

I, I suspected that's why I thought that was a good analogy.

It is.

So you can't act effortlessly if you don't know where you're going. Ambiguity creates drag. This concept is so important in software development, Joe, because 80% of software development I've heard, and I believe this too is in maintenance work and improvements. So we practice this concept in Agile project development. It's really helpful to see you're making progress week after week. So you have these, you can define it as you want, as your team, but two week sprints, for instance, and you have a task, you have a project and a task and you say, you define exactly what this looks like when it's done. But have you ever started something without a clear definition of success? What happened?

A couple things happened. Number one, you don't get done because you don't know what it is. You're just there floundering. You're easily, I'm. I'll speak for myself. I'm easily distracted because if I don't have a clear definition of what done is or what success is, I can just go from one thing to another and feel like I'm doing something right. But I think what's most important, and I'm sure you, you address it here somewhere or you're going to, is you don't feel like you're winning, you don't feel like you've accomplished, you don't feel like. You don't get that satisfaction of being able to step back and say, look at this, I'm done for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah. That creates momentum and that's really important. And I'm reading a book, I don't know, maybe you'll be upset with me. But it's another Law of attraction book, 30 examples. It's just all examples of how to practice it. But one of the things I had in there was to create five goals for the day. Be very specific that you can accomplish. Write them down. She says, in the evening, I'm doing them. In the morning, I'VE done it for yesterday. And I wrote down ones that I wanted to achieve for that day, and as I did them all day long, I marked them off. And that is a great feeling of accomplishment. I know that's just a task list, but if they're also part of the values and things you're starting to achieve, I love that. And she's using it in terms of keeping the things that are important to you in focus and use those as your five things and doing them and finish them. But they're not difficult things. They're small steps. But I complete. I felt great this morning. Look, I did them all.

Yeah, dude. And there's something powerful, especially if you're not a person, that makes a list and checks off a list, Right? There's something powerful in that process itself. And sitting down and making a list and crossing it off. I've heard many people say, well, I'm just not that kind of person. I'm not a list maker. I just do what needs to be done almost as a badge of honor. I don't need to make lists. I just get it done. No, you don't. You're floundering. And if you're not, and if you're not a list maker, you can be. Just make a list of something you know you're going to do, as stupid and simple as it might be. Write down on a piece of paper that's. And say something like, I'm going to move my pen from the left side of my desk to the right side of my desk. Write that down, move your pen, and cross it off. It sounds silly, it sounds stupid, but that builds that little tiny accomplishment muscle a little, tiny bit. And you can do something as ridiculous as that and build on it.

Yeah, I agree. I think one of the things I noticed doing this yesterday was I have this little blue notebook that was pretty much empty. Started writing in it, and I left it downstairs. I forget what I put in that list to some degree until I bring it upstairs and go, oh, I could do that. Now let's do that one. Cross that off the list. As simple as what you're saying, because you're going through the emotions and the actions of where's my notebook? And keeping it in your conscious memory of this is something I said today I'm going to do. Oh, yeah, I didn't do this one yet. We can go do that one. Mm, yeah, it's. It worked out well for one day. I'm gonna try to keep this up. Some of these things I want to do for 30 days. It's what I'm doing with that book.

I don't know if this is going to fit into into your agenda here, Kurt, but whenever you're writing something down to take action on, make sure it's something that you have 100% control over, that's not dependent on anything or anybody else or any outside force. It's gotta be something that you have 100% control over. Now, you may have to involve other people, but if you want to set up a meeting to discuss the next the plan for next fiscal year, the revenue plan from next fiscal year, well, you can't. If you're part of a team, you can't do that yourself. But what you do have control over is to contact the stakeholders and set up a meeting. Right? You have complete control over that.

I agree. Yeah, it's a great point. Try to make them as attainable as possible. One of mine today is to do 30 minutes in a training that I started yesterday. I got interrupted. I started at 8 o' clock in the morning. Yet someone messaged me and needed some help and took me right off the path. So I'd like to do 30 minutes. If I don't, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna get it started and see if I can get through that. But it's meeting a goal of mine to my continuous learning. Think of a vague goal, get in shape versus a defined goal. To be able to jog three miles without stopping by October. That's a great thing to be as defined as possible. Be very specific what it is. Don't be too vague about it. Here's some other examples. Planning a podcast Instead of let's do a new podcast episode, let's record a 30 minute episode on effortless action. That covers four points or an hour episode. Well, I try to get 30 minutes of the topic and then we've got our stuff bantering going on in our I'm with you finishing points. A business example. When writing a course or a proposal, have a definition of done checklist for sure. Or you'll go off in all kinds of different directions. If you don't know what done looks like, you'll never feel done.

And that's an important emotion to feel done. Yeah, that's an important emotion to know that you have completed something. It's important to me. In fact, I've said this many times before. One personality quirk that I have is whatever I'm doing, I want to be done with it.

Well, yeah, you break a bigger project into small pieces and then you know you're done for that day. For instance, you always, we always have these projects that are bigger than what we can achieve, than we think we can achieve. But if you could break it down to, hey, like, I got a project I'm doing. I'm just painting some radiators for the bathroom upstairs. My wife's been asking me all weekend to do it and I started it yesterday and that was on one of the things on my list to start that project. And I guess this fits right into start, which is number two. Make it as easy as possible to begin. Overthinking delays action, and action builds clarity. And starting is often the hardest part. How can we lower that activation energy? Use a two minute rule. What's the first tiny step I can take right now? I know we've talked about habits, atomic habits. You could fit that in too, Joe. But as an example, this project that I've been procrastinating, now, it's not too difficult. One of the things that was hanging me up, I talked about things that get you stuck was I didn't have the paint and I wasn't crazy about going out to get the paint. So I was out there getting some things for a project that I'm working on. I finished it and I'll talk about that in my win for the week. But while I was out there, I also got the rust oleum paint. And so yesterday I already had the paint. So yesterday morning I could start which was the first sand down. It's got some rust on it and there's two pieces for four pieces. But I just decided, you know what, I'm going to sand off the rust and I'm going to get one coat of paint on it because it's got to dry. I want it to dry overnight so I could put a second coat on it. But just get started. This is always. These first two things have always been revolutionary for me. What's the definition of done? And just do something small to get started.

And if you're still stuck, that means that you've not gotten small enough. Yeah, if you're still stuck means you. So you may think about, okay, all I want to do is sand this down. That's my first step. Well, if you're still stuck, what's the next smallest step? And sometimes you got to break it down to the absolute ridiculous. I'm going to stand up from my chair. That's the next smallest step. What's the next, what's the next step after that? I'm going to walk to my car. Sometimes you have to do that.

Yeah.

And we have to be comfortable with that, don't we?

My shoes on.

Yeah, we have to be comfortable with that.

Right. I learned this in college. I was a procrastinator and studying. I learned by getting an F in failing accounting 101. Maybe if I picked up the book and read the first paragraph and. Well, actually, it starts like you said, going back to the example of doing the first thing. How about getting out of my room and going up to the library every day? I'm going to start that habit. All right, now I'm at the library. What the heck am I going to do? There's nothing else to do here. Study.

Right.

I'm gonna read. And this just for me. It just builds. I think it's for everybody. It builds momentum. And before you know it, an hour goes by. And look at that. I studied for a whole hour and.

Cut yourself a little slack, right?

Yeah. So even for this podcast episode, just writing out that outline can feel really big. Open up that blank document, entitle it effortless action notes. And you know what? I'm already rolling. We have a big advantage, as Joe and I have talked about with AI now. Oh my gosh, it's a game changer for things you're trying to do creatively to help you get a start.

I use AI a lot. I use AI every day. I use AI several times a day. And that's. To me, that's the biggest use of AI in my life right now, is just to help me defeat the blank page.

I know it. I did this with my mid year review. Did you do a mid year review?

Not yet, but I got notification that it's time to do it.

Oh, okay. Well, yeah, it's past mid year and I got that email too. It was coming due. I just dread doing that. This is a procrastination item. But once I get doing it, I enjoy it and I look back, look at all the things I've accomplished now. I've done a couple of things that have really made this even easier, besides adding AI to the process. But I save emails that I get from awards. These are from customers, internal customers of mine that send me an award and I just put them in a folder called Kudos. And then I also keep a log. I'm trying to be. I'm really pretty good with keeping a log of project engagements because I keep notes in there, what I'm working on for people. And between those two things that I've done during the six months of this year I told Copilot, which is the Microsoft version to and we have the internal version where it can read the emails in that folder for me as a source of data. And then I exported my SharePoint list of my engagements that have a lot of details into an Excel document because it can read an Excel document. And I had it write the first draft of my mid year review and it was. Dude, it was spot on.

That's awesome.

It. It structures it in a proper way also. But there were things that were missing or that I wanted to change and I. But I probably spent 30 minutes on the thing and I was done.

Whereas before it would have taken you. This is just my guess, hours and hours to do. Because you're trying to get. Because you're. Number one, you're putting it off because you have a blank page in front of you. Number two, you got to gather all that data together. And number three, you're starting off with a framework. It provides you a framework and with those things being done, the rest of it is just your creativity.

Yeah, you're right about the framework. I get stuck with that. What would be a nice framework for this document? Oh my gosh. AI is so good with that.

Definitely love it.

What's something you've been procrastinating on? Because the start feels too big. Joe.

Wow. I have quite a list. I do know that I've just hired two salespeople, one for Europe and one for North America. And I don't know if I've called those out as my wins for the week. I think I probably did. But I have to revamp our reporting system so we know when, so we know how we're winning. We have to revamp our reporting system.

Great example.

And our technology is just not there yet. Our technology is just not there yet at work. So I have to decide what's the bare minimum information that I need. I have to decide actually this is a. This is time that I have to decide what the success look like.

Yeah. What's done look like.

And part of that I need to get input from my, from the people that I report to to say, okay, as I report up. Because that's what much of this is about is saying, okay, this is what my team has accomplished as I report up. What is the minimum that you need to see? And I think that's a good way to phrase it. What's the minimum that you need to see?

Yeah, for sure. I think these next two points are going to help you with that too, Joe. I'll keep going here.

Let's do it.

Simplify. Clear the path. Complexity is the enemy of execution. Are you starting to see why I'm hearing Joe's earworm in my head? Simplify the process to make action more natural. Can you eliminate steps, tools, or decisions? I love this question. What would this look like if it were easy?

Oh, I love that too. I love that. What would it look like if this were. And this is a play on kind of a question that I use a lot when somebody says, I don't know. And I say, well, what if you did know?

Yes.

And I love what this does to your mind, the mind shift that a question like this does. What would it look like if it were easy? Because we think it's hard. Yeah, but if it were easy.

Yeah, we were easy.

All the hard of this we do.

We really start to catastrophize or go into all the hard things.

But you said something I don't want to skip over as well. You said, simplify the process to make action more natural. And I think the word natural is a different way of looking at how we execute. Are we executing in a way that is natural and not forced and not with a lot of friction? Anybody can just bulldog their way through stuff. Most people can. And I'm actually pretty good at that. Just be damned the consequences. We're going to get this done, right?

Right. Yeah.

But that's not good for anybody. If we can simplify our process to make it more natural. I love that term, to make it more natural. Yeah. That's a mind shift as well.

Yeah. I think we. Coworker of mine who's also now my manager, together when we worked on projects and we're helping other people, like keep working at this. And if you start to get frustrated, we don't want you to get frustrated. If it starts not to feel too natural and you're stuck, reach back out to us. We'll help you get unstuck. That's a great way to work. If you're feeling really frustrated, maybe it's time to take a step back and ask this question. What would this look like if it were easy? Can I reach out to a YouTube video or a friend and get past this? Mention how simplification. Simplification reduces resistance. Fewer tabs open, fewer priorities, get more flow. So instead of five productivity apps, just use a notebook and a calendar. I think of the Disney lightning lane. You pay a little more, you're going to wait less. You got effortless paths to the ride. Oh, it's such a nice enjoying vacation. We don't have to wait in lines. I think of my approach to software development and I'm working with another team. This is really important. We talked about the definition of done and you guys are working as a team. It's really important to everyone to be on the same page of what that is. But also people will come to me with all of these amazing great ideas with tons of complexity. They're talking about the finished thing. I try to talk them down to what is the phase one. How can we get value out to our folks in some productivity as fast as we can without putting every last feature in there. And that's a software approach. But you can think of that same thing in any projects you're working on, because save some of those things for phase two and define what that's going to be and when you're going to do it. Everyone feels better. Okay, I can wait. I have never had someone say, no, we have. I say, okay, it's just going to take now, it's going to take six months. Could we get something in the next couple months? Have you ever found a way to simplify a routine? And suddenly it clicked.

Joe, that's a timely question because this happened to me last night. Kurt, at work, I have to gather information from our manufacturer's reps, our field reps, on a monthly basis and every month. What I would typically do is I would send them. I would send them a spreadsheet of all the customers in their region within a certain marketplace. And I would say, please tell me about this and this. And I think I'm making it simple by telling them, here's here are your customers, here are the five things I need to know. Give it some thought and return this document back to me within two days.

All right?

That's generally how the conversation goes. Yesterday I actually ran out of time because my reports are due today. I ran out of time and I didn't give them enough time to review each account on a. On a minute level. So I sent them their list and I asked one qu. And I asked one question. I said, please take five minutes to review this list and let me know if there are any changes. That's it. Please take five minutes to review this list and let me know if there are any changes. Now, there are some details behind that that I'm not revealing here because it's, it's personal work stuff. But I have everybody's response back. Other than two reps, I have everybody's response back. And it's just as good of information as if I would have asked it the other way.

Yeah, Great example. Yeah, I love that.

Just simplified it. I simplified it out of necessity because I didn't have time. Take a look at this. Give me five minutes. Take a look at this. Let me know if there are any changes done.

Yeah. The fact that you simplified it. Necessity is the mother of invention, as we all know.

Yep.

But it's a good practice, even when we know it's not necessary because it certainly makes our life a lot easier.

Right.

Number four, progress. Somewhere I've heard Joe say something about progress, like every single week of the podcast. Let momentum carry you. Momentum is so important. You think about sports. If you've ever been a part of a sports team, when you've got momentum and when you don't, you watch a football game, you know anything about football, you're like, wow, you know which team has lost the momentum and which one's got. Even though one team had it in the first half and then the other second, then you're like, oh, boy, here comes Patrick Mahomes marching down the field. Some of these quarterbacks that you know for these last minute heroics are like, oh, boy, we know what, we know how this is going to end with Tom Brady with the ball in his hands in the fourth quarter.

Do you remember the super bowl with the New England Patriots? Was it, was he with the Patriots at the time and the Atlanta Falcons?

Yes. I was playing back from Disney and the plane could not get the game on. Is that the one you're talking about?

Well, yeah. Tom Brady was down like 30 points in the fourth quarter. Okay.

Right.

Everything was going against him, but Tom made a quick, a couple quick completions, Quick, easy completions.

That's right.

Got some momentum. I don't, I don't know how many runs he made, but I remember this. And you felt it. You're like, oh, boy, about six plays into it, you're like, man, this guy's got a groove going on.

Well, the other thing is the defense starts playing a little soft and off the ball a little bit, right?

Yeah. And you think, man, and suddenly that little bit of momentum that he developed by those quick wins, those quick little short outpasses because he, it was necessary because he had to manage the clock and he had to make his throws as efficient as possible. They had to get out of bounds football, you know what I'm talking about? But the point was he had these quick little wins and that those little wins built on. And all of a Sudden you think, oh boy. And the other team, I remember seeing interviews from the Atlanta Falcons. They're watching this or like there was nothing they, there was nothing they could do about it. All of a sudden all this momentum got built up and they ended up coming back and winning the Super Bowl.

Totally snowballed. It was amazing. I did get in the car after the flight. I was coming home, got a 45 minute ride and it was on the AM radio, so I was able to listen to the end of it. Quite amazing. But that progress, Joe, from those little wins builds motivation. And those small wins drive consistent movement towards your goal. Use visible progress checklists, habit trackers, milestone boards. Yeah, Something visual is really important too. Don't measure how much you did track if you move forward. I like that. I know Joe likes that because there's a quote from the book. Done is better than perfect. Direction is more important than speed.

Yep. Yep. I like to say direction's more important than position.

Yes.

If I'm. If I'm £200 today and I was £210 last week, I'm doing okay. If I'm £200 today, and I was £190 last week.

Yeah.

Might want to check on something.

Some examples. If you're writing a blog post, focus on finishing a rough draft instead of making every sentence perfect. I did this yesterday at work. I do blogging internally and that can be definitely intimidating at first. Again. Oh my. My chat GPT or co pilot is extremely helpful in writing blog posts. Getting that rough draft started, I'm just adding pictures, I'm changing some things, I'm adding, I'm tweaking it here and there. But I finished that blog post by just getting started and building off that momentum. I even saved it and went back to it later in the day and finished it off. So it was a great feeling. In fitness. Celebrate showing up three times a week, even if the workouts are short. I love that, you know these people that start off doing heavy weightlifting the first day and they burn themselves out because they're like at rigor mortis the next morning.

Right.

That always is something I want to do slowly and start building momentum. Or if you're starting a walking program, can you walk to the end of the street today?

That's a perfect example because that's literally the simplest type of exercise, almost the simplest type of exercise you can do.

So good for you.

Right. And if you just say, I'm going to walk to the end of my driveway and back and I'm going to do that every day for the next week. And the important thing to that concept is don't do any more than that. Restrain yourself. Walk to the end of the driveway the next week, for the next week, every day. And then the next week say, I'm going to walk from the end of the driveway to halfway down the street.

And I so much believe that. There's been a lot of talk lately about the sedentary lifestyle. Getting up and walking around is like better than stopping smoking or something I've heard. Incredible. I totally love that. Yeah. So, Joe, where have you seen some small, imperfect steps turn into something big?

I'll go back to a project that I have at work, and I deal a lot with large corporate contracts at work. Part of that process is you have these large organizations with 20 different locations and you think, how am I going to capture the business from these 20 different locations?

Yeah.

What we have to do when we're faced with those situations is we pick the location that we think we have the best opportunity to win, and then we pick a product from that location that we think we have the best opportunity to win. And you win that product, and then before you know it, you've got three products at that location. And then before you know it, you've got all the products that you offer at that location. And then you can take that story to the next location. And then after you have four or five locations, you can take those that story up to the corporate office and say, here's what we've done at these four or five locations. Now, it started with a 30 cent product or a $1 product that you're asking them to start buying from you for a short period of time.

Yeah. Build trust.

You win that and you build trust and that builds on, okay, how about this business and how about that? Now the whole process might take a year or more, Right. But it's little incremental wins at a time.

I love it. Well, I'm really helping you out with your career.

Oh, you're a giver.

As I was researching quotes, I didn't put this down for my quote for the week, but it's reminding me. You quoted this guy Lao.

Yeah. Yep.

How do you say his last name?

Lao Tzu.

Lao Tzu. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

And gosh, I love the simplicity of that. I mean, it does. I remember hearing a long time ago, I think I was in middle school, the analogy of eating an elephant. Well, how do you eat an elephant?

I love that one too.

One bite At a time.

That's exactly right.

First of all, I'm not sure I'd ever want to eat elephants.

But still, great wisdom we all learned a long time ago. Well, I'm going to tie it all together for you. You got to define which clears the fog, start breaks the inertia. Simplify, removes the friction and progress builds momentum. I'll use this analogy for you. I'm riding a bike downhill. You gotta pick the hill first of all. You start by pushing off. You gotta simplify it. You're simplifying by going downhill because you're gonna just go with the flow. Isn't it so much easier when you're going with the river flow or going downhill? Instead of trying to fight the current and then progress, you're just going to coast with ease. And there you go. That's my topic this week, Joe. Effortless action. Two cool words put together.

That's a fantastic analogy. Bike riding. Because bike riding just starts with getting on it, right?

Yeah.

And defining what you're going to do. Start just getting on the bike and move forward. Don't make it overly complicated. Go downhill and then just appreciate the progress you're making.

This reminds me of learning how to ski.

Yeah, I've never skied.

I did it the hard way. My wife, and she was my fiance or girlfriend at the time, took me with 14 people up to the biggest mountain in New England and decided they're going to teach me how to ski. And we went down like a really difficult hill. So pick a easy hill, push off, go sideways a little bit. Don't go straight down the hill. Just ease into that turn. Have plenty of area to turn so you don't have to. You don't have to make a quick turn and then just learn how to coast on the bunny hills before you take on the. Even the mid hills.

Good episode. Good stuff, man.

Thanks, pal.

I've just, I just read Effortless recently, but daggone, man, makes me want to go back and read it again. There's such wisdom in that book. Such wisdom. And it's a simple book to read. He practiced what he preaches. It's not a great big tome. It's a very simple, easy to read book that you can get through in a relatively short period of time when it comes to books. And it's very actionable.

Very good companion to his first book that was wildly popular.

Good episode. Good episode.

Essentialism. So if you got essential things you want to do, he started saying, well, wait a minute, some of these essential things are Hard. They're big. And people can't seem to fit them into their schedule or get started. And that's where what led to effortless. It's a good companion.

And you can read both of these books in a couple weeks easily.

I'm gonna go back.

Yep.

I'm gonna go backwards. That's the way I roll. All right, Joe. Well, it's good to go back and then maybe practice some of these.

Yeah.

Go through the second time. What's your win for the week?

Well, I pulled off a surprise birthday party for my wife.

Congratulations.

And I gathered a bunch of her friends and our family together. And my wife loves to do karaoke, and she's actually a pretty good singer. And we had a friend of mine. A friend of mine. The way we did it is my daughter said it. I arranged the place. I made the reservations at a restaurant. We were. The plan was to eat it at 7:00, and the plan was to eat at 7:00. And karaoke starts at 9.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, she loves it. She's a really good singer, too.

That's awesome. What's her best song?

Oh, she hasn't done. She does a great bat. She does a great Pat Benatar. Hit me with her best shot. A great Reba McIntyre. Yeah, just across the board. She's a pretty good singer. Yep.

That's awesome.

Every once in a while, I'll sneak in a song on her that she's not, that I know, that she knows, but she's not done.

All right.

And she always nails it.

We ever get together, you got to take me out with our wives.

We'll do it, dude.

It'll be horrible, which is fun.

I'm a terrible singer.

You do Garth Brooks?

Yeah. I sang Shameless by Garth Brooks at karaoke, and it was awful. But what I lack in talent, I make up an enthusiasm. And entertainment we could do.

I got friends in low places.

That would be awesome. So my wife. On my wife's birthday party, what I did is we planned it for 7 o', clock, dinner at 7 o', clock, and karaoke starts at 9. But what happened is we made plans with other friends. We acted like we were making plans with other friends. And so my wife thought that, okay, something's up. We're going out with these friends. Okay.

All right.

They called at the. They called at the last minute and canceled. And that was part of the plan, right? They called at the last minute and canceled.

You're devious.

And we're like, oh, daggone. It. And so she. You could tell that she was like, oh, I thought this was our thing. I thought this was my birthday. And we're like, I don't know, what do you want to do now? Well, my daughter happened to be over. Right. She was part of the plan. She happened to be over. And she goes, well, me and Caitlyn are going to do karaoke tonight. Do you want to do that? And I said, nah, I don't want to do that. And my wife is talking me into going to do karaoke. Right.

Oh, man.

I said, oh, really? I said, okay, but can we be back by. Can we back. Be back by nine? I'm tired. And so anyway, we got her there and walked into the restaurant and there's this whole group of people Happy birthday. Saying happy. I sang we the whole restaurant slash bar saying happy birthday to her from the karaoke mic. And it was a good crowd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What night was it? What kind of night was it? Was it a weekday night?

This was. Yeah, I guess it was fourth of July. So it's Friday night? Fifth. Fifth of July. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Saturday night.

Oh, that's a regular out going out to do karaoke night.

Yeah, yeah. So it's fun. There you go.

Well done. My wife hates surprises, so I'm jealous that you could do that. We did have. She just had a birthday July 8th. Also.

Awesome. Happy birthday.

I think she had a good thing going. We had a good day. How about I built a solar powered water fountain and bird bath?

Of course you did. You know, there's no stopping you, dude.

You know, I love water features. I was inspired by my trip to Disney World. I really like to go and check out all the fountains. The Japanese pavilion has this amazing koi ponds and little rivers and streams and pour into waterfalls. I love all that. Now, I'm not that inspired to build a Japanese backyard yet. Maybe when I retire, I should maybe think of that. They're expensive to buy, like something. Some of these fountains that you see, they're hundreds of dollars. But of course, I went on to YouTube, found an example of something I could do using like terracotta pots, and I made it three tiers. I got. I was exhausted doing the shopping for this. I was thinking the next day, I was like, boy, I. I can't believe how exhausted I am from going to Ocean State job lot. I went there a couple times, went in the morning, went back. I was going to Home Depot and Lowe's, the local Moscarello garden shop, looking at what I could put together even Walmart. I ended up getting one of the flower pots from Walmart, but it's a combination of pots from all those places and even the base came from the Moscow's Garden shop. But they're all the same kind of color, which is good, I think. I had one at home that I used too, but put it together with some caulking I got at Home Depot. And yeah, oh, I bought the solar fountain, the pump off of Amazon, which came the next day, which is fantastic. And that, you know what's great about that solar pump? Once I put it together and got it all and I tested well, I had an error, I had a flaw, and I had to block one of the pots and one of the tiers so it would work properly. But I was so glad when I got it up and running. Even one morning I got up, the sun hadn't even come out, it was cloudy and the solar was already working.

No kidding.

I was surprised by that. I thought it really would need direct right on sunlight. And it's not been even this morning. It's a cloudy kind of morning and it's starting up on its own. So I do fear that the raccoons are going to destroy it. But so far it's survived. Although last night the raccoons took the top of my solar fountain pump. There's a little spray nozzle at the top with. Comes in three or four pieces. They had it spread all over the deck. Luckily I noticed it was missing and I put it all back together. I might have to caulk that all together with the silicone so they can't.

Pull it off, but that's awesome, man. Yeah, solar. Those little solar cells are pretty powerful.

I was shocked that, yeah, it's better than plugging in something that I might want to unplug at night. It'd be a pain of maintenance. The fact that this thing comes on during the day and shuts off at night, it's perfect. So I'm. I love that sound of trickling water. Like, my wife went out and bought me a couple of umbrellas for my deck and I'm sitting there in my Adirondack chair sipping a cool drink and listening to my water fountain. Now I hope the birds will get attracted to it and start splashing around in it. I put it on the deck for now. I may move it if I don't get birds, but that's the idea. What's your resource tip or hack this week, Joe?

So I read an article a little while back from Forbes Magazine. And as I was trying to think of a resource that was appropriate for this show, I remember reading something about this and it's by Mike Kangy from Forbes Magazine. The title of it is the Cycle of Success. How Momentum Turns Habits into Results. And he does a really good job of outlining very similar to what we talked about here. Number one, habits. Number two, momentum. Number three, progress. Number four, success. And it gives a really good synopsis. It talks about using, using this pattern in health and in business, applying it to your maybe your team or committees at work, and understanding that success isn't necessarily it. It's not necessarily a cycle or destination. It's a cycle. Right? You just, you continue to move through success and keep that momentum going. I think that's the best way to put it. In fact, I'm sorting through the. I'm looking through the article here and that's actually this one of the sub headlines. Success is a cycle, not a destination. And I really like the it starts off with I find the cycle of success simple but powerful. Habits create momentum, momentum leads to progress, and progress guarantees success. Think about those words, progress guarantees success because the success isn't in the destination, it's in the progress that you're making. Love it.

Yeah, I like the very first insight here. He talks about focus on inputs, not outputs. Like you always talk about track sales calls your team makes, not just deals.

Closed or that'll happen. Deals will close when you do the. And that goes back to something I said earlier is do what you have control over.

Yeah, I like that. Good article. How about my resource is the Ninja Outdoor Pizza oven. I have been as enamored with pizza ovens as I have been with water features for a very long time. The thought of building a really nice, expensive brick outdoor oven, where to put it, how to do it, the cost of doing it has eluded me. And how could I make this easy? Was the question I asked myself. Joe and I had won from work $150Amazon gift card from a project I worked on. And it took a long time in coming. I knew I was going to win it. It took six weeks or more before I was watching for it all the time. And I was researching outdoor pizza ovens, which if you go on Amazon now, there's lots of these different types and kinds and that have sprung up over recent years. The ooni is one I've seen, for instance, down at Lowe's, which is based on wood pellets. My wife actually bought me one for Christmas. That's like that and I've tried it. Limited success. I don't think I tried very hard. But the fact that, that this one that I bought, the Ninja, my son's father in law had one, inspired me first of all. And there's two different versions. There's one, it looks, I think the newer one is smaller in shape and has a window that you can see your pizza being made. But it's electric first of all. So normally I think that's cheating without doing a wood fire. The funny thing, this one says it's wood fired because they do have pellets that you can add to it to give you that smoky flavor if you want. I have not tried that, but I've been practicing with this and I got a refurbished one. They were having these on sale at a decent price. But when I finally got my coupon it wasn't on sale and I didn't want to wait. But I figured I'm going to get the same kind of size as a bigger one. If I want to do breads, it can do baking even and all kinds of features, even dehydration if you want it to. And the fact that it's outdoor and ready for outdoor and withheld the elements is awesome. Ninja's a pretty good name. I got it for $200 on a refurbished. I've never bought anything refurbished on Amazon, so I'm taking the chance. I thought, although it was mentioned, it's in excellent shape. But I've been practicing making pizzas for a couple weeks and so far what I've been experimenting with is buying the dough at grocery stores. So I tried one of the stores had nothing but like wheat flour. I was like, I'm not doing that. And then I went to another store and they had sour bread and white dough and I tried em both.

Sour bread sounds good.

The sourdough one was the better of the two. This was from Stop and Shop. If anyone has Stop and Shops, they were like $2 and 50 cents for per loaf. That makes one pizza. Like a 12 inch pizza I'm going for. And they were good. And I'm learning the stove too because it has seven settings for pizza. But the one I'm trying is the Neapolitan that takes three minutes and 700 degrees, which is pretty awesome. And my daughter and my wife had some and really liked it. So that was very inspiring to me. And then Aldi has been a place that we've really been going frequently to for vegetables and fruits and they have the best watermelons I'm just loving those this summer. And I tried their pizza though. They have two versions. They have a jalapeno one with jalapeno peppers in it. That was really good. And the other one, that's only $14, I think for their pizza dough. And Joe, it comes out fluffy. It's thick pizza so far. So if I want to experiment, I can do build my own doughs. But just to confirm that I'm doing a great job, my wife said, let's bring it up to Judy and Ken's, our friends. Have a fun afternoon. I had Monday off from work. I brought up all the dough, the pizza oven, everything we needed to make pizzas. We had some sausage that we got from a farm, from this co op that we're a part of and getting vegetables and we made pizzas. We made four pizzas and they were outstanding. They had a great time. They enjoyed the process of making pizzas. It's a fun day with friends as you were talking about hanging out. So I love my Ninja outdoor pizza oven and it's been a real fun and learning experience.

So it's portable?

Yes. It's probably like 40, 50 pounds. So it's not light. It's a heavy duty. It's got a nice.

Is it designed to be portable or did you just make it portable by moving it?

I just lifted it up and put it in my car.

Awesome.

But yeah, it's. You want to put it. I have. I built a kind of a barbecue cart outside. So I got it on wheels out on my deck. I put a cover on it. It's a lot of fun. I've got two great barbecue things going well. I've got four now total. I've got my Weber charcoal grill, the kettle. I've got my smoker that I built. It's on a 55 gallon drum. I've got my brand new Blackstone griddle, 36 inch and now a pizzas. I've got like a redneck outdoor kitchen.

Yeah, you got a whole kitchen in your backyard. That's awesome, man. That's awesome.

Don't you like a homemade pizza?

I do, I do.

I think it's just as good as if I had it in a brick oven made of coal and fire out there.

And you simplified the process, right?

Yeah.

You get the same end result and you get to have fun learning the new tech, the new technology behind this, the Ninja oven. And you get the. You get a nice pizza from it fast.

Yeah, you gotta warm it up for 30 minutes or, you know, it you're putting your pizza on there. In three minutes it's done and you're enjoying a fresh. And it's perfect size too for two people.

Nice.

What's your quote for the week? We'll finish up.

Well, my quote comes from a guy by the name of Ernest Schumacher. Not a very well known guy, but extremely influential. He's a German born economist, statistician and philosopher. He wrote a book called Small is Beautiful, A study of economics, as if people mattered. So it's very human focused. Right. He was a real advocate for something called appropriate technology for simple living long before it became mainstream to. To have technology serve us, to make our life simpler and a simple mindset and that economic systems should serve people. So I really like how this guy thinks generally. And he says, Mr. Schumacher says any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius to move in the opposite direction.

What does that mean to you?

So anybody can make things, can overcomplicate things and muddy the waters and fog up the process with a bunch of complex ideas, a bunch of complex processes. And I think about Gantt charts when I think about this, where somebody lays out a Gantt chart and they have everything completely planned out. And if this happens, then that happens. If that happens, then this happens all across the board for the next 12 months. And just way overly complex. Anybody can really do that. Any intelligent fool can do that. Anybody can make it bigger and more complex. But to simplify it, that takes time and a certain kind of genius. I remember hearing a quote from, I don't know, I think it may be Ernest Hemingway where he said, I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have time.

There's. Yeah, there's some wisdom in both those quotes for sure.

But I do love that any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius to move in the opposite direction.

I must be a genius. I did this. I do this with presentations and I. You could get enamored with the most amazing PowerPoint that people research and spend hours upon hours building. My philosophy is I'm usually teaching somebody how to do something. I feel that there's nothing better than just going right in and demoing how to do it.

Yep.

I think showing someone how to do it, which is recorded and they could step by step follow that process. I had someone recently I'm working with. I told her I'm so impressed with what she did. Come to find out she watched one of my videos and stepped through it. Well, doesn't that make me feel good?

Sure.

That you watched the video, got weight, got really deep into. I was so enamored and proud of her for doing that. But yeah, that's a great quote, Joe. I'm gonna keep that in mind. I'd like to be a genius.

You are. What's your quote?

I have a shirt now. Did you see my shirt? I got a Disney World that says genius on it. No, you weren't paying attention. I've worn it. I'll have to show it to you.

Sorry.

Instead of pushing harder, find a different path. Ask yourself a question. What if this could be easy? That's from Greg McGowan.

That's the question of the day right there.

I thought that it was inspiring when I read that. What if it could be easy? And we gotta remind ourselves, because if we do, we could be geniuses. Joe.

I got a. I have a report and presentation to put together this afternoon. I'll probably spend the better part of my day in it, and I'm going to ask myself that question and really write down what comes to mind. What if this could be easy?

Let me know. Report back to me how you made up.

I sure will, brother. Well, how about we wrap up right there? Fair enough.

I like it.

All right. Great show, dude. Great topic. I love this stuff. And I love the book Essentialism and Effortless. Both of those books by Greg McGowan. Good stuff. Our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to email us, you can email [email protected] Remember, simplify it, right? Because I don't think that we can really make progress unless we simplify something, and that's proven out in this entire episode. If we make things way too complex, we're not going to make the progress that we want. And we know that progress is better than perfection. We just got to keep moving forward.

I think we made some progress this week and we're going to try to do better next week.

Joe, good stuff. Talk to you soon. It.