#62: Greg McKeown — Make it Easier to Do What Matters

April 25, 2021 by Cal Walters in Intentional Living, Leadership

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I’m really excited to have Greg McKeown back on the show. If you want to listen to my first interview of him, check out Episode 39. Greg is the author of the new book Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most and a previous book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which hit The New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than a million copies. Like many of you, that book has had a tremendous impact on me. He is also a speaker and the host of the popular podcast What’s Essential.

Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level—and others don’t.

Greg is the CEO of McKeown Inc. Clients include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!.

His writing has appeared or been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month.

McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR, NBC, FOX, and as a regular guest on The Steve Harvey Show. Entrepreneur voted his interview at Stanford University the #1 Must-See Video on Business, Creativity and Success.

Essentialism was voted by Goodread as the #1 Leadership and Success Book to Read in a Lifetime.

McKeown is an accomplished public speaker. He has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world including in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Singapore.

Highlights include speaking at SXSW, interviewing Al Gore at the Annual Conference of the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland and receiving a personal invitation from Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway, to speak to his Annual Innovation Conference.

McKeown challenges conventional wisdom in a unique and engaging style from the first moment to the last instant. As the event organizer at Greater Public said after McKeown addressed their 1,000-person conference, “I have been part of this event for 16 years and McKeown is the best speaker we have ever had!”

McKeown is an active Social Innovator. Serving as a Board Member for Washington D.C. policy group Resolve and as a mentor with 2 Seeds, a non-profit incubator for agricultural projects in Africa. He has also been a speaker at non-profit groups including The Kauffman Fellows, Net Impact and Stanford University: he recently gave back to Stanford University by co-creating a popular class called, Designing Life, Essentially.

He serves as a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum. He recently moderated a session at the “Summer Davos” in China called, “Unpacking Social Innovation Models for Maximum Impact”, served as a panelist at the “Sharpening Your Creative Edge” working session at the Forum.

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Prior to this, McKeown collaborated in the research and writing of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and worked for Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Practice assessing senior executives.

Originally from London, England, McKeown now lives in California with his wife, Anna, and their four children. He did his graduate work at Stanford University.

Please join me in ordering your copy of Greg’s new book, Effortless: Making it Easy to Do What Matters Most, at the link below!

Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most

By McKeown, Greg

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#39: Greg McKeown (NYT Bestselling Author) — On Essentialism, Negotiation, and Legacy

May 28, 2020 by Cal Walters in Intentional Living, Leadership

Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level-and others don't. The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown's New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level-and others don't. The definitive treatment of ...

Greg McKeown has dedicated his career to discovering why some people and teams break through to the next level—and others don’t.

The definitive treatment of this issue is addressed in McKeown’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. As well as frequently being the #1 Time Management book on Amazon, this book challenges core assumptions about achievement to get to the essence of what really drives success.

McKeown is the CEO of McKeown Inc. His clients include Adobe, Apple, Google, Facebook, Pixar, Salesforce.com, Symantec, Twitter, VMware and Yahoo!. His writing has appeared or been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, and Inc. Magazine. He is among the most popular bloggers for the Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn’s Influencers group: averaging a million views a month.

McKeown has been interviewed on numerous television and radio shows including NPR, NBC, FOX, and as a regular guest on The Steve Harvey Show. Entrepreneur voted his interview at Stanford University the #1 Must-See Video on Business, Creativity and Success.

As an accomplished public speaker, Greg has spoken to hundreds of audiences around the world including in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan and Singapore.

Prior to this, McKeown collaborated in the research and writing of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and worked for Heidrick & Struggles’ Global Leadership Practice assessing senior executives.

Originally from London, England, McKeown now lives in Calabasas, California with his wife, Anna, and their four children. He did his graduate work at Stanford University.

Follow Greg’s important work at GregMcKeown.com or on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram

On this episode, we discuss:

some of my journey with Essentialism,
part of the genesis for Greg writing Essentialism,
why so many of us focus on non-essential things,
what he calls the “success paradox,”
the social pressure to do more,
how to say “no,”
how to negotiate and acknowledge trade offs,
Greg’s perspective on The Great Reset due to COVID-19,
what he would change about the book, and
his views on legacy

Episode Transcript

Greg’s new podcast Essentialism with Greg McKeown launches in June 2020. Check it out!

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Partner with us financially at Patreon

#25: First Things First in a FOMO World

January 14, 2020 by Cal Walters in Intentional Living

In life, we face endless options about how to spend our time. With social media and the internet, we have never been so aware of these options, and the barrier has never been lower for people to share their opinions about what we should be focusing on (like this post!).

We also live in a world where everything is urgent, needs to be done now, and we ignore the fundamental reality of trade offs — saying yes to something invariably means saying no to something else.

With these obstacles, how do we decide what is important and remain focused on the most essential things in life?

On this episode, I share what I have discovered on my journey to live a life prioritizing the important over the urgent. It is not always easy, but it is absolutely worth it.

Wisely, President Eisenhower thought that we should devote attention and time to our activities in accordance with their importance and urgency. He acknowledged how we are too inclined to focus on the things that are both important and urgent, generating a reactive behavior based on what has to be done right now, instead of focusing on the things that are important and not urgent, which would be the basis of a more strategic behavior based on long-term goals.

In his classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen R. Covey popularized Eisenhower’s time management theory by organizing activities into four different quadrants (see below), based on their relative importance or urgency. In Dr. Covey’s book, he defined urgent as requiring “immediate attention.” Urgent matters “act on us” and they are often “pleasant, easy, and fun to do.” But urgent matters are often unimportant. Importance, however, is about getting results. Important matters contribute to your life mission, values, and high priority goals. But often these important activities are not urgent, requiring initiative, planning, and discipline.

The Time Management Matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey

Successful people — meaning people whose lives are in line with their deepest values — spend most of their time in Quadrant II. Over time, small deposits in these important, non-urgent tasks of Quadrant II can produce incredible results. But the opposite is also true. Neglecting Quadrant II activities can lead to long term regrets and more urgent matters (e.g., health issues or relationship problems).

I hope this episode of the podcast will help you think more about the important things in your life, prune away the non-essential, have the courage to say no, and truly put first things first.

The books below have really shaped my thinking on this topic (and this episode), and I want to give credit to the authors for their thought-provoking work. I recommend each of them: