The Art of Less Doing (And More Living)
About Episode
How much time do you spend every day in your email and your various other inboxes? How about running errands, paying bills, posting messages to social media, or any one of fifty other repetitive tasks that never seem to end? It can often seem nearly impossible to manage the amount of things that have to be done on a regular basis, but the good news is there is a better way.
In this episode I have a rapid-fire conversation with Ari Meisel, the co-founder of Leverage (formerly “Less Doing”) as well as the author of such books as “Less Doing, More Living” and “The Art Of Less Doing.” We talk about how you can organize, automate, and outsource much of the needless busy work in your life so you can focus more on the important work you should be doing instead.
Episode Highlights
- Ari’s battle with Crohn’s disease and his path to efficient living
- How to eliminate stress systematically
- The Importance of outsourcing and automating your life
- Defining your “why” and using that to frame your goals
- Using tracking to catch up to the ubiquity of technology
- Quantifying your problems and learning to tackle them efficiently
- How to minimize multitasking and open up your schedule
- Learning the difference between efficiency and productivity
- Batching work into categories to make it more manageable
- Battling the time-wasting nature of email
- What apps/plugins most successfully maximize group communication
- The importance of setting macro goals for your day
Useful Links
- Athletic Greens
- Q&A Submissions
- Leverage Website
- Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier
- The Art Of Less Doing: One Entrepreneur’s Formula for a Beautiful Life
- IFTTT (If This Then That)
- SaneBox
- FollowUp.cc
- Google Inbox
- Trello
- Zapier
- 10 Productivity Tools to Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder
About Guest
Ari’s story starts in 2006, when some unexpected news derailed his booming real estate career: Crohn’s Disease: A highly-debilitating digestive ailment, Crohn’s barred Ari from leading a normal life. He lost weight, energy, and the ability to work with regularity—in fact, there were times he could only work for sixty minutes a day.
With a blossoming business to run, Ari knew an hour per day was unacceptable. Against the advice of doctors and loved-ones, Ari embarked upon an extraordinarily painful journey to cure what medical textbooks consider an incurable disease.
Through excruciating amounts of trial and error, Ari not only regained control of his life but beat this seemingly unbeatable disease—and is now symptom-free.
Less Doing, More Living ; Less Doing Virtual Assistants; and Less Doing BPO are the result of Ari’s amazing journey back to health, happiness, and well-being.
Ari currently lives in New York City, where he spends every ounce of free time with his loving wife, Anna, and four fantastic kids—Benjamin, Lucas, Sébastien, and little Chloe.
Episode Credits
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, the show notes were prepared by Jakin Rintelman, and this show is executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.