Come with me on an exploration of self-discovery. On this podcast we decipher what really matters,

as we unravel the chaos of day-to-day work to learn how to build an essential life.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the What's Essential Podcast. I'm your host, Greg McEwan, and

I'm so looking forward to having a conversation directly with you today. I always love that about

podcasting, a chance for, let's say, an intimate chat. And one of the things that I want to share today

is the idea that books are not entirely dead things. They have a life of their own. I heard

another author once say, when you write a book it's a bit like water running down a mountain.

You don't control where the water goes and sometimes it can surprise you what happens as it makes

its way. And that's certainly been the case with the publication of Effortless and before that

essentialism in Brazil. Something is happening in Brazil with these books. If you go to the Brazilian

Amazon website, it is typical for both books to be high on the bestseller list, even outselling

phenomenon books like Harry Potter and the likes. And I don't really understand exactly why, but

it means that there is this evolving conversation taking place with the marvelous people of Brazil.

And why that matters for today's episode is that one of the major newspapers there, Estado,

reached out and asked me to answer a series of questions about Effortless. So I want to bring those

questions to this conversation and answer them with you. And I think it may be an enlightening

experience. So here's the first question. They ask the pandemic with its excesses of screens,

information and stress caused more fatigue in society. The same one that in 2010 was called

the Society of Tiredness by the philosopher Bianchul Hanh. I really love that phrase,

Society of Tiredness. Doesn't it conjure a certain image where all of us find ourselves now?

Is this form of exhaustion and glorification of burnout an inherent characteristic of Western

countries? That's an interesting question, isn't it? An inherent part of it. I think it is an

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