How to get more happiness with less effort

More with less is a practical tool that delivers on two promises:

• It is always possible to improve anything in our lives, not by a small amount, but by a large amount.

• The way to make the improvement is to ask, “What will give me a much better result for much less energy?”

It’s not enough to seek improvement by means of greater effort or the same effort as today. A much better outcome must be sought alongside lower effort.

To expect more with less may seem unreasonable, but this is precisely the reason that amazing improvement is possible. The trap in making more effort to improve things is that we continue making the same kind of effort. We may improve things, but it will be a minor improvement and sooner or later we’ll exhaust ourselves in the process. Instead, it should be plain that in making the startling demand for more with less, we are going to have to dream up a great breakthrough. By deliberately cutting back on what we put into the task and yet asking for much more, we force ourselves to think hard and do something different. This is the root of all progress.

Thinking hard may sound a bit frightening, but isn’t it much better to do a little hard thinking, arrive at a much better result, and avoid a lot of hard doing? With a bit of practice, thinking how to get more with less becomes fun. The trick is to pick activities offering a higher reward for less energy.

Imagine you’re a caveperson in the town of Bedrock, home town of The Flintstones. You need to get to the other side of town in a hurry. Your alternatives are to walk or run. Walking will take forever. Running is quicker, but more effort.

To run would be to make the very modern blunder of seeking more with more. It’s the classic trap of trying to secure a better result by working harder.

The 80/20 Way is different. We demand, quite unreasonably, a much better result with much less effort. But since we know that more with less is possible, we continue thinking until we have a more with less solution. How can we get across Bedrock much faster but without the slog of running?

Like the waitress at the prehistoric diner, we could rollerskate with less energy than it would take to run, yet arrive quicker. Or we could go one step further and jump on the back of a friendly brontosaurus. That’s more with less.

Or imagine that you’re a teenager wanting a date with an attractive boy or girl.

You can think about how nice the date would be, but do nothing. Easy but useless.

You could draw attention to yourself, maybe becoming president of the debating society or winning an athletics event. But the boy or girl you are after may not notice or care — a high-effort, low-reward approach.

You could spend ages trying to win over his or her parents, hoping that they’ll arrange a date. This may work, but only with extraordinary effort.

Or you could simply go up the object of your desire, put on your best genuine smile, and ask for a date — easy and just as likely to work.

This example is obvious, but you can draw a more with less chart for anything in your life. With a little imagination, you’ll come up with a higher-reward solution that uses less energy.

I am not saying that we should take the path of least resistance or never dedicate ourselves 100 percent to an activity or cause that is dear to us. The choice is ours. If we go for the right activities, we can work effortlessly and achieve a great deal, or we can put everything into what we do and achieve even more.

Think of any great scientist, musician, artist, thinker, philanthropist, or business leader.

• Do they achieve by trying to do something they find easy and natural, or by trying to do something that is hard and unnatural?

• Do they achieve because they work hard, or because they find it easier than other people to excel in their chosen arena?

• Do they work hard because they feel guilty, or because they identify with their work, believe in it, and love it?

Even when they work hard, their work is always economical — they get a huge return on their effort.

In our personal lives, there are always things we can do that work very well, yet take little money or effort. It’s incredibly corny, but the best things in life are free or nearly free, giving a fantastic return on effort.

Saying thanks, showing appreciation, displaying affection, watching a sunrise or sunset, caring for a pet or a plant, smiling at a casual acquaintance or stranger, committing a random act of kindness, enjoying a walk in a beautiful place — these are all ways of getting more with less. The reward is out of proportion to the effort.

If you think about it, the only way to take leaps forward in our lives is to demand more with less. The beauty of more with less is that it can be applied to anything, it always works, and it always gives an answer you can keep up throughout your life. The problem with more with more is that it’s not sustainable. More with less is easy to maintain and extend. A bit of upfront thinking is a small price for a huge lifetime reward.