Less Doing, More Living
Make Everything in Life Easier
Book Edition Details
Summary
"Less Doing, More Living (2014) guides you through nine fundamental steps on your journey toward becoming more effective. In these blinks, the author shares his favorite tools and techniques for optimizing, automating, and outsourcing everything on that pesky to-do list, thus giving you time for the things that are most important in your life."
Introduction
You wake up every morning with a mental list longer than your arm, drowning in emails, rushing through errands, and wondering where your time disappears. Sound familiar? You're not alone in feeling overwhelmed by the endless demands of modern life. The truth is, most of us are working harder, not smarter, trapped in cycles of busyness that leave little room for what truly matters. But what if there was a different way? What if you could reclaim not just your time, but your mental space and energy for the things you genuinely care about? This isn't about doing more—it's about doing less while achieving better results. The secret lies in three powerful principles: optimize everything down to its essential core, automate whatever doesn't require your unique human touch, and outsource the rest to others who can handle it better. When you master these approaches, something magical happens. You stop feeling like you're constantly behind, stop sacrificing your weekends to catch up, and start living with intention and ease.
Build Your External Brain System
Your mind is your most precious resource, yet most of us treat it like a storage unit for random information. Every phone number you're trying to remember, every brilliant shower idea, every follow-up task floating in your head—they're all competing for the same mental bandwidth you need for creative thinking and problem-solving. The solution isn't to train your memory better; it's to build a reliable external brain that captures, stores, and retrieves everything for you. Ari Meisel discovered this principle during his battle with Crohn's disease, when mental clarity became crucial for his recovery. He noticed that back in high school, he was generating business ideas every week, filling marble notebooks with creative concepts. But by college, those ideas had dwindled to once a month, and after graduation, they stopped entirely. He initially thought creativity simply dried up with age, but the real culprit was mental overload. His brain was so consumed with remembering daily tasks and obligations that there was no space left for innovation. The transformation came when Meisel began systematically emptying his mind into external systems. He started with Evernote, treating it like a digital dumping ground for every thought, idea, receipt, and random piece of information. But the magic wasn't just in storing—it was in the retrieval. Evernote's search function began connecting dots he never could have remembered on his own. When researching a blog post months later, forgotten articles he'd clipped would resurface, creating unexpected connections and insights. His creativity returned with a vengeance. Start by choosing one capture tool—Evernote is excellent—and commit to putting everything into it for one week. Every idea in the shower, every business card you receive, every article that catches your eye. Don't organize yet; just capture. For follow-ups, use a service like FollowUp.cc to send yourself email reminders at specific times, removing the mental burden of remembering to check back. Set up your smartphone to quickly voice-record thoughts that you can transcribe later. The key is trusting your external brain completely. When you know something is safely captured and easily retrievable, your mind stops wasting energy trying to hold onto it. You'll be amazed how much mental space opens up for actual thinking, creativity, and presence in the moment.
Master the Three Keys Framework
The heart of optimization lies in three sequential steps that transform overwhelming chaos into manageable simplicity. These aren't just productivity tricks—they're a systematic approach to reclaiming your life from the tyranny of endless tasks. The sequence matters: optimize first, then automate, then outsource. Skip steps, and you'll end up automating inefficiency or outsourcing confusion. Consider how Meisel handled the seemingly simple task of providing discount codes to students. Initially, it was a sprawling sixteen-step process filled with redundancies and unclear instructions. Every time he tried to delegate it, confusion and back-and-forth emails multiplied the work instead of reducing it. The breakthrough came through ruthless optimization—questioning every step, eliminating redundancies, and anticipating decision points. He wrote instructions as if explaining to someone who knew absolutely nothing about his systems. Through multiple iterations with different virtual assistants, each bringing fresh eyes to spot assumptions and gaps, the process crystallized into nine foolproof steps. But more importantly, the act of optimization revealed which parts could be automated entirely and which truly required human judgment. What started as a time-consuming interruption became a smooth, hands-off process that freed his attention for higher-value work. Begin with one recurring task that consumes your time weekly. Document every single step you currently take, no matter how obvious it seems. Then ask brutal questions: Which steps are actually necessary? Where do you make assumptions? What could go wrong, and how would someone handle it without asking you? Create your "Manual of You" for this one task, making it so clear that a stranger could execute it perfectly. Once optimized, look for automation opportunities. Can parts of this process trigger automatically based on certain conditions? Can you use tools like IFTTT to connect different services? Finally, test your outsourcing-ready process with a virtual assistant service like Fancy Hands. The discipline of optimization will transform not just this task, but how you approach every workflow in your life.
Design Your Custom Workflow
The industrial-age concept of working Monday through Friday, nine to five, assumes everyone operates at peak efficiency during the same hours. This one-size-fits-all approach ignores individual circadian rhythms, energy patterns, and the reality that different types of work require different mental states. The solution is designing a custom workweek that aligns with your natural rhythms and maximizes your effectiveness during peak hours. Meisel's journey to a two-day workweek started in college when he batched all his classes into Tuesdays and Thursdays, creating four-day weekends with recovery time between intense work days. As he entered the professional world, he gradually reduced his available work days while increasing his output during those concentrated periods. His current Tuesday-Wednesday schedule isn't about working less—it's about working with laser focus during optimal times while protecting space for rest and creative thinking. The psychological impact was immediate and profound. By shortening the window when clients could reach him, everyone was forced to batch their requests and communicate more efficiently. No more scattered interruptions throughout the week. No more Sunday evening anxiety about Monday morning chaos. Instead, two intensely productive days followed by five days of protected time for strategic thinking, relationship building, and personal rejuvenation. The constraint created clarity for both him and his clients. Start by tracking your energy and focus patterns for two weeks. Note when you feel most alert, when creative ideas flow easily, and when you struggle with concentration. Identify your peak performance windows and protect them fiercely. Use scheduling tools like ScheduleOnce to control when others can book time with you, showing only your chosen availability without explanation or apology. Experiment with batching similar activities into concentrated blocks. Perhaps handle all phone calls on Tuesday afternoons, write content only on Wednesday mornings, or process administrative tasks exclusively on Friday. The key is creating sustainable rhythms that honor your natural patterns while training others to respect your optimized schedule. Your custom workweek becomes a powerful boundary that serves both productivity and well-being.
Summary
The path to less doing and more living isn't about cramming more efficiency into an already overwhelming life—it's about fundamentally reimagining how you approach time, energy, and attention. As Meisel discovered through his journey from chronic illness to Ironman completion, "The idea of Less Doing is to reclaim your time and, more important, your mind, so you can do the things you want to do." When you build systems that think for you, optimize processes until they become effortless, and design workflows around your natural rhythms, you stop being a slave to your task list and start being the architect of your ideal life. Take action today by choosing just one overwhelming area of your life and applying the optimize-automate-outsource framework—you'll be amazed how quickly clarity replaces chaos and intention replaces reaction.
By Ari R. Meisel
