Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier
Chapter 1
Welcome to the Art of Less Doing! I’m Ari Meisel. Before we begin, I’d like to give you a little background on me and on Less Doing.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my life. I started my first company at the age of 12, doing website design. By the time I started college, I had also started a few other tech companies, and after college, I started working in construction.
When I visited a friend in upstate New York, I got the idea of creating a loft district in Binghamton. I spent the next three years working in construction. I built the lofts, a bar, and a few other spaces.Then I returned to New York City, where I started specializing in green building materials. I’ve invented two green building materials, I’ve written a book on green building materials, and I’ve spent most of the last eight years building and consulting.
In 2006, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a very painful and incurable inflammatory disease of the digestive tract. My case was severe. I was in and out of the hospital, and I was taking 16 pills a day. I nearly died.
After reaching a personal low point in the hospital, I decided to do everything in my power to strengthen my body, which by then was very weak. Through a combination of yoga, nutrition, natural supplements, and rigorous exercise (Ironman and Crossfit), I was able to fight back the symptoms of Crohn’s until I was finally able to suspend my medication. Eventually, I was declared free of all traces of the ‘incurable’ disease, and I competed in Ironman France in June of 2011.
I have since spoken at seminars and at a regional TED Talk about my struggle against a seemingly insurmountable opponent. What I discovered is that nutrition and fitness are not the whole story. Even with them under control, stress was still a big part of my illness. It’s a big part of other autoimmune illnesses and inflammatory conditions, too, not to mention life in general. Before I could completely solve my problem, I needed a way to address stress.
Through the process of data collection, self-tracking, and analysis, I became an Achievement Architect. Less Doing is my approach to dealing with the daily stresses of life by optimizing, automating, and outsourcing all of my tasks in life and business.
What Is Less Doing?
The idea of Less Doing is to reclaim your time and—more importantly—your mind, so you can do the things you want to do. Even little bits of time are important. It all adds up. By applying the practice of Less Doing to your life, you can free up the time and mental space to do the things you care about most.
The three keys to Less Doing are:
- Optimize
- Automate
- Outsource
These keys apply to health, productivity, or any other type of problem or goal.
For any challenge, the first thing to do is optimize it. Break it down to its bare minimum, simplify it, and eliminate everything that’s not completely necessary. Once you’ve boiled the task down to its essentials, the goal is to break what’s left into bite-sized tasks that can be replicated and possibly delegated.
After you’ve optimized a task, the next step is to automate as much as possible. Use software or processes so you can get the task done without human involvement—just set it and forget it.
If you outsource an inefficient task, that doesn’t really help because it’s still inefficient.
Finally, for anything that’s left, outsource to a generalist or a specialist. It’s important to note that although outsourcing can do a lot for you, it comes after optimizing and automation. If you outsource an inefficient task, that doesn’t really help because it’s still inefficient. It’s much better to eliminate work by optimizing or automating whenever you can and only outsource what’s left.
I based the system of Less Doing on nine fundamental principles:
- The 80/20 Rule
- Creating an External Brain
- Customization
- Choose Your Own Workweek
- Stop Running Errands
- Finances
- Organization
- Batching
- Wellness
This book will lead you on a step-by-step journey towards making everything in your life easier. If you need more help, I invite you to take advantage of the resources below.
The Art of Less Doing Course
You can enhance your experience with interaction, collaboration, and guidance by enrolling in The Art of Less Doing course. You can go to http://www.lessdoing.com/learn/ to find out more.
Though it’s not required, I highly recommend taking my other courses on Udemy as well:
Achievement Architecture — Be More Effective at Everything
Achievement architecture is a coaching service that I’ve developed through a long process of experimentation, analytics, and personal tracking. Through Achievement Architecture, I’ve helped individuals achieve some amazing results. Anything you want to achieve is possible through building the right architecture—that is, the setting of goals. This includes everything from more productive corporate operations to treating chronic illnesses and even running a faster mile.
Anything is possible with the right analysis, tools, and methods provided in an Achievement Architecture coaching session. I am a problem solver. See my TED talk on overcoming a seemingly insurmountable problem. I have worked with clients to:
- Take a startup from idea to reality with barebones re- sources
- Overcome chronic illness, sleep less, and other bio-hacking
- Go from running a 9.5-minute mile to a 7-minute mile in 60 days with no more than 20 minutes of daily exercise
- Go completely paperless, reclaim your inbox, get back your time
- Outsource everything from virtual assistants and web de- velopers to private investigators and composers
You can learn more at http://www.lessdoing.com/
LessDoing.com started in early 2011 as a blog of productivity hacks. It quickly developed into a framework for optimizing, automating, and outsourcing everything in people’s personal and professional lives. The blog covers everything from email management to fitness and helps make everything in life easier. I encourage you to check out the blog and subscribe to the RSS Feed, Newsletter, and Podcast.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let’s get started.
Ari’s book, “Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier” will be released on April 3rd, 2014.
You can pre-order it on Amazon.com here.
Personal note from Clay:
Ari has been a friend of mine for years and I was lucky enough to read some early drafts of his book. I’m a productivity hacker myself. I teach others about productivity and automation — and Ari is where I go when I need help or have questions. He’s a guru’s guru. I’ve learned a ton from him and his book is a perfect way to learn all his magic tricks to optimize, automate and outsource tasks so you can focus on enjoying your work and your life more.
