Leo Babauta launched his book/package “the Effortless Life” last week.

I’ve been thinking about making business easier and smoother – you know, effortless.  So this really caught my eye.

I bought the book.

His overriding premise is that we should get rid of goals and expectations.  I’ve read his blog for years and I’ve read what he writes about this.  My gut reaction has been to resist that idea, I mean, how do you get where you want to go if you don’t have a destination in mind?

He develops this theme much more deeply and, dare I say it, persuasively, in this book than he does in his blog.  I’m starting to get it now and I’m willing to give it a try this week.

He says if you focus on what you want to do, rather than on what you think you need to do, you will get much farther and have more fun on the way.  I’m coming around to this idea, especially as I would like to focus on writing and at this point in our pivot, I can see how writing will be helpful.

I discussed this with my friend Regine (I love my weekly talks with Regine, she makes me explain ideas thoroughly – no sloppy thinking) and came up with the following points:

  • Goals and objectives narrow your options and don’t leave room for serendipity.
  • When you are working from a place of joy and passion, you turn out better results.
  • Really? You aren’t giving up goals, you are just making the goal your heart’s desire.  What a cool way to spend your day.
  • Passionate people attract other similarly passionate people.  Yay, a tribe!

So, I can, I see the value, I’m intrigued and it suits me right now.  I’m a gonna do it.  I am doing it.  I’m working on what I want to Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday this week.

  • This is a good week because we have just finished an sales tax deadline, and we don’t have anything pressing right now.
  • We’re making a pivot. (this will be a whole other post, but I’ve started to talk about it here)
  • I’m participating in NaNoWriMo, or rather, I’m calling it NaBizWriMo.

So far, so good.

How about you?  Can you set aside time for fun/passionate/heart’s desire kind of work?  If you could do anything over the next ½ hour what would it be?  Why not just do it?