The Art of Less Doing

By: Ari Meisel

Narrated by: Drew Birdseye

At the peak of his career and success, Ari Meisel nearly killed himself from exhaustion and overwork.

He had to make a choice: He could let his "success" destroy him physically and mentally, or he could find a better way to live. He spent the next few years redesigning his life from scratch.

Ultimately he found the way to reduce his workload by 80 percent while actually increasing results and success. Furthermore, he could spend time on what matters most: his family.

This book describes his method.

Using Meisel's revolutionary Optimize, Automate, Outsource approach, you will learn how to take almost anything you do and make it work smarter instead of harder. Modern methods like the 80/20 rule, the 3 D's, and multiplatform repurposing let you build a high-powered, traditional-style "success factory" that requires only one employee to run.

Less work, more results, more happiness.

©2016 Ari Meisel (P)2016 Podium Audio

Great but not perfect

This book is a great introduction to the world of productivity. It says to get ride of your To Do List, but i think that can be misinterpreted. He says that the Pomodoro technique is better than a to do list. But for me, my to do list so I know what to do, without it I would forget everything I need to do. My to do list is also on an app called Notion so I have it everywhere, it’s not time consuming to “make it “ because it’s already made and I just add things to it when I need to. He acted like you were some people who make a to do list every time they need to get to work which would of course be time consuming, and he acted like instead you should just work for 25 minutes and take a break for five minutes or whatever. I think that part of the book isn’t great advice but to be fair that’s only one piece of advice from one chapter.

Everything else in this book I think is probably good advice. It talks about what’s essential, and habit formation. It is truly great.

I do think it is somewhat of a started book, for productivity, not necessarily in the aspect that it doesn’t go into concept deeply, it does, I’m more of saying that the book only touches on nothing concepts and there are so much more. The productivity project, I am not done with yet, but that book seems to be better and longer than this one. Don’t get me wrong this book seems great but it’s just an introduction book to productivity I would call it. Maybe it’s all you need though. Maybe only need some productivity tips. This book has so much. I would also recommend James Clear‘s book atomic habits. The book talks way way way more about how to form a habit. This book talks little bit about habits but not enough to truly rewrite your habits. But maybe that’s not your goal. It depends on what your goal is.

Overall, this is a great book, and I do recommend it for anyone that wants a taste of the world of productivity.

Just what I need

The practices and principles brought out in this book have reinforced habits being introduced in my life through coaching and development. Ari makes it practical, simple & to the point. One of my best listens to date and will go back to this one often.

Good start to have more quality time

It is interesting how we could do more when we set limit of time. It is possible to take 2 days to do something that we could have completed in 2 hours.

Ok but only scratches the surface

The books are OK, but only scratches the surface. I’ve read lots of productivity books, and so has the author clearly. He summarizes lots of other peoples books and repackage. Is it in a summarized form. It’s OK if you’re new to productivity and finding new ways to enhance your performance, but I didn’t get much out of it. It’s a short listen, so I don’t feel like I wasted too much time and it was a good reminder of some ideas that I read another books.

Life changing life hacks

Loved the practical application and the review at the end of each chapter. This was very helpful not only for me but for all the entrepreneurs (clients) that I help in their work life balance.