Concept
What if this could be easy?
'What if this could be easy?' is Greg McKeown's inverted question from Effortless: instead of asking why an essential task is so hard, we ask what it would look like if it were easy, which turns endurance into a design problem.
McKeown's starting point is a belief many capable people hold without noticing: that important work must be exhausting, and that strain is proof of value. The belief makes essential tasks feel heavy, so they are postponed or pushed through at great cost. Inverting the question does not deny that some work is hard. It changes where attention goes, from bracing to designing, and it tends to reveal steps that exist only from habit, help that is already available, and simpler routes to the same result. The test of a good answer is that the easy version still delivers the outcome we wanted; if it does not, it is a shortcut rather than an improvement. Some work, such as building a demanding skill, stays hard at its core, but much of the difficulty around it turns out to be optional.
A real-life example
A finance manager at a textile exporter in Bursa lost two days every month assembling the cash report from four colleagues' spreadsheets. Asking what the easy version would look like, she noticed that three colleagues already had their figures on the first of the month. A one-page template with fixed cells, due on the second, cut the work to half a day.
How to use it
- 1Write the question at the top of the page before starting a task you have been avoiding, and list three answers.
- 2Look for steps that exist only because they always have, and for help that is already available.
- 3Check the easy version against the result you wanted before you adopt it.