039: Ari Meisel on Less Doing, More Living, and Getting More Done with Less Strress

Summary: Ari Meisel is a successful entrepreneur, consultant, the bestselling author of Less Doing and runs one of the world's top blogs on productivity: www.lessdoing.com (http://www.lessdoing.com/). Ari has become a renowned expert on productivity, automation and efficiency for top entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business tycoons. Ari's Optimize, Automate, Delegate system has helped thousands of entrepreneurs create businesses that run efficiently and effectively, creating more profits and cash flow with less work, struggle and stress. Ari started on his path to life hacking and optimizing his life when he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease in his 20's. After a serious episode with Crohn's where he was left in a hospital bed and completely incapacitated, Ari had a huge wake-up call. Even though his doctors told him that Crohn's disease was incurable, Ari determined to find a way to heal his body on his own. He started a daily regimen of what he calls self-tracking. He measured his blood levels for various biomarkers of health, took numerous medical tests religiously, started testing the results of changes to his diet, sleep habits, meditation, rest, exercise, work schedule and more. In a few months, he turned his health and his life around, and has since started testing and tracking almost every area of his life, creating dramatic improvements not just in his health, but in his stress levels, productivity, income, business growth and more. In this fascinating interview, Ari shares some immediately useful tips to help you get more done with less stress including: * Why you must start any quest for increased productivity by optimizing. Until you find the best, most efficient way to do something, incremental improvement is often wasted improving a task that shouldn't be done altogether. * How to automate routine tasks and daily time-sucks with smarter email management, awesome automation tools like Zapier, and much more. * When, how and why you must delegate to grow your business, increase your income and create real time freedom (and the biggest mistakes to avoid when you delegate important tasks). * What self-tracking is, and how you can use it to improve any and every area of your life (it sounds like a bold claim, but once you try it, you'll prove it to yourself). * Why you must defer more tasks in order to be more productive (deferring is not procrastinating! It's consciously deciding that right now is not the right time to do a particular task, and then scheduling the proper time to get it done). * How to create an "external brain" that allows you to clear your mind, store useful information for later, and be able to retrieve it at a moment's notice when you need it (Ari recommends using Evernote for this, and shares some great tips on how to get the most out of Evernote and storing your ideas for the right time). Learn more about Ari's Less Doing More Living seminar (https://lessdoinglabs.businessresearchgroup.org/sales/live-event-optin) coming up in New York City May 1-3, 2015. Enjoy this interview with Ari Meisel? Leave us a review on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/publishing-profits-podcast/id788984301) and let us know what you think! Even just a few words helps a lot. Check out Tom's newest training course for authors, Bestseller Ranking Pro at http://www.BestsellerRankingPro.com (http://www.bestsellerrankingpro.com/)