I tried to write it carefully and responsibly, but sometimes, as Rudyard Kipling put it, ‘If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,’ I think that can happen with anything you write-so there could be that error. I didn’t try to write something that just said, ‘Hey, expect incredible results for doing nothing.’ I’m not advocating ‘get rich quick,’ and I think some people could take it that way. McKeown: I am, in anything I write, concerned about the false version of what I’m saying.

But how do you think Effortless might have the potential to impact Millennials and Gen Z? The idea that greater effort will always result in a bigger payoff has become a systemic belief in capitalism and especially the US, and refuting that belief is definitely appealing to people of all ages. In a society that expects hard work, but then rewards hard work with more hard work, it’s easy to see why. His new brainchild, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most, out this week, gives us the much-needed permission to take the path of least resistance-a path that we often seek but from which we tend to veer away. McKeown's 2014 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less taught readers how to elevate what is absolutely essential (like family, relationships, and health), and eliminate what is not.

Idioms like “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” or “no pain, no gain” come to mind. Long hours, no breaks, little sleep, high stress, zero fun-these are things that leave the body and mind bedraggled but are often celebrated by American society, especially in the corporate, medical, sports, and academic worlds. In fact, McKeown completely rejects what he describes as “today’s hustle culture”-the idea that in order to achieve success we must work ourselves to the brink of insanity.

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