227. Ari Meisel: More Productivity, Less Doing

Ari Meisel (@arimeisel) created a productivity system out of necessity. He was suffering from a chronic and life-threatening illness that was so severe, he had no choice but to make the most out of every ounce of energy he had.

He took everything in his life and he applied what he now calls “OAO.” He Optimized, Automated, and Outsourced everything he could. Through his own system, which is now called Less Doing, he was able to track the symptoms of his illness, and what triggered those symptoms.

This helped Ari work his way to a clean bill of health. He eventually competed in an Ironman competition.

I talked to Ari several years ago, after I first discovered the Less Doing system. That webinar conversation is available to Patreon backers of certain levels.

Now, as I am working on my next book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, I wanted to talk to Ari again. I realize that so much of what I’ve learned and developed over the past several years is built upon what I learned from Ari’s Less Doing system.

If you’re going to love your work, you have to do less of what doesn’t matter, and more of what does matter.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

Why does OAO – Optimize, Automate, and Outsource – have to be done in order. Avoid the common mistakes people make when they try to “scale up” broken systems? Ari says there are deep-seated psychological reasons behind why we procrastinate. What are some of those reasons? You might learn something surprising about yourself. You’ve heard me talk about weekly routines instead of daily routines on the podcast before. We’ll dig deep into how Ari organizes his three-day, fifteen-hour work week. For example, why is Thursday his content day?

Photo: TechCrunch

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Shownotes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/ari-meisel/