“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.” pg xv
Ari Meisel, a self-professed “achievement architect”, outlines ways to streamline your chores, finances, and more in order to free up time for the activities, and people, that are most important to you.
“I don’t want you to run errands, ever ever ever again. They’re not efficient, and there’s no way to make them efficient.” pg 69
Many of his suggestions are common now, like setting up an automatic delivery from Amazon for your regularly needed household items like toilet paper and paper towels. But when I considered that this book was published in 2014, then it seemed like a stroke of genius.
However, that won’t necessarily be useful to readers who are looking for more updated suggestions to make their lives that much more efficient- except for a few of his timeless strategies. For example, measure and monitor how much time it takes you to do things so then you can figure out where your time is going to.
Not rocket science, but helpful.
The one suggestion of his that I found most intriguing was his idea of creating an ‘external brain’. Basically, you write notes, diary entries, clip electronic articles and organize it in a program (he likes Evernote) so that you can access it again quickly if you would like.
“… you can create an ‘external brain’ that stores everything reliably, offers instant access, and frees your mind for more interesting work.” pg 18
I thought this approach could be very helpful for someone like me who reads and researches different topics all the time, for the fun of it, but also for professional content creators who are looking for their next blog post or YouTube video, etc.
How much easier would it be to be able to access all of your previous research rather than having to start over from scratch each time?
On the other hand, there is a massive amount of time required to both create this external brain and keep it updated. I suppose the investment only makes sense depending on what you’re eventually going to use the database for.
Recommended with reservations for readers who are looking for ways to streamline their lives.
Thanks for reading!
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