Ari Meisel

How To Be Happier and More Productive.

April 2, 2018 by Ari Meisel

(Hint — It’s about your agility).

I guess one could define agility as the ability to change direction quickly, but it’s so much more than that.

To be agile requires the ability to see not only the direction you are going, but the change you need to make to get there.

It reminds me of that experiment that gauged our powers of observation.

Did you see it? No?

Well, watch it again and concentrate only on the gorilla.

That’s agility. It was right there the entire time. But you weren’t focused on it until it was pointed out to you.

Many entrepreneurs have lost the ability or freedom just to see the gorilla.

Too much is at stake.

Too many fires and not enough water.

Too much time spent on things they are not good at.

Breaking up the log jam requires a profound shift in perception and it rarely occurs at team building seminars or by reading yet another “Guaranteed Business Success” airport paperback.

It comes from disruption; the seeds of revolution.

Before you get all freaked out about my word choice, I’m not channeling Marx and Engels. I am not a Political Scientist.

I’m an entrepreneur who has had his fair share of failures; loads of times where I was following the directions, head-down on some project I loathed, but knew had to be accomplished.

I was missing the gorilla.

The paradox is that you become more agile and therefore more innovative, when you impose restrictions upon yourself. If you are doing everything, you are accomplishing nothing.

So how do you break this cycle?

Try this little exercise on agility.

Make a list of the things at which you are excellent, then another one for situations where you adequate and competent, but not particularly engaged. Finally make a list of the things you are not enthusiastic about at all, but do anyway.

Guess which one of those lists is your gorilla in the room? The key to becoming more agile? The essence of the disruption that needs to occur to propel your forward?

Right.

Today is the day you stop doing things you are not good at.

Let it go.

Give it away.

Someone really can do it better and faster than you.

You are wasting your talent.

It’s time to embrace disruption or be crushed by your overwhelm.

Your choice.

How To Get It Going and Get It Done.

March 30, 2018 by Ari Meisel

“It will take me five minutes.”

“I just need to find a half hour.”

“I’ll get to it as soon as I get some bandwidth.”

“It’s on my list. Really.”

We’ve all said these things.

Many of us have people on our team who repeat this mantra as a defense, an excuse or a legitimate reality.

It’s not very productive.

There is an enormous difference between how long it will take to do “it” and how long to get “it” done. It’s critical to understand the subtle nuance here because it’s the key to efficiency.

First, It doesn’t mean that you throw up your hands and put it off for yet another day. We all know that doesn’t work.

You do need to pick a specific time to get it done. Because you have to consider WHEN you can get to something, when you will be able to devote the appropriate attention to it and when you will find that “flow state” that enables you to get through tasks with ease.

We all have different peak times during the day.

Many of us try to plow through the procrastinated pile of stuff during a time when we should be focusing on low focus activities. And it doesn’t work. Your frustration may be the key to understanding that the “when” just might not be “now.”

I developed the Less Doing Peak Time App which will track and trend peak performance times throughout the day. It gives a detailed assessment of the right times for the right tasks. Once we know our rhythms better, we can batch our day accordingly.

Next, is the delegation part.

Remember outsourcing without first optimizing is the definition of putting the cart before the horse. You’ll just be stepping in a lot of manure.

Sure, you could do it, but if you can’t get to it for a week, then there’s value in having someone else do it right now. Once you’ve internalized a sense of your natural abilities during any given day, letting shit go is more comfortable.

If you haven’t gotten to it, ruminated on your failure to finish it and spent way too much time in your head wondering why, it’s time to let someone else help.

For example, I haven’t physically written an article in five months, there are other things I have to do. But the writing gets done.

Not writing for me is putting a two-line idea in my editor’s Airtable, then we pick a time to hash out the idea face-to-face. Then she writes it. I read it. And she posts it.

We can go through ten different topics in an hour, and I’m confident she will not only get my gist but can add weight and clarity to my thought processes.

The alternative, where I do all the writing, is unworkable for me because it means the content will never get out there and no one will find validation, inspiration, and assistance.

So my content creation system is outsourcing at its best, and if you put it into practice, it can be the beginning of the end of your overwhelm.

How To Delegate And Keep Your Sanity.

March 3, 2018 by Ari Meisel

“If you’re just accountable to yourself, then you are accountable to no one.”

The time has come for you to stop saying, “You got this,” as if your overwhelm is some badge of honor. It’s not.

The best reason to delegate is to finally get over the mindset that you need to hold on to anything. It’s too easy to create a bubble around yourself.

Then no one knows what you are working on.
Then there’s no transparency.
Then there’s no progress.

So how do you stop?

I’m sure you have all heard of the RACI model, but just in case it stands for:

R — Responsible — The person assigned to do the work.
A — Accountable — The person who makes the final decision and has the ultimate ownership.
C — Consult — The person who must be consulted before a decision or action is taken.
I — Informed — The person who must be informed that a decision or action has been taken.

We use this at Less Doing for Project Management with good result when everyone can tell me, what letter they are wearing on a specific project.

We don’t always get it right, and when we get it wrong, it’s always a breakdown of a team member’s ability to internalize and advocate their role. In other words, to own that shit.

I don’t like to be anything other than the “I” part because that’s Level 6 delegation in action. (Want to know more about the Levels of delegation, link to this article).

So, being genuinely effective means doing the right things, not just more things.

If you find yourself saying, “ I’ve been head down on this for the last month,” it means you are inefficient. Stop it.

A founder’s mantra should be:

Say it to the right person at the right time, once.

If you do that, you are no longer alone. And the moment you are no longer isolated is the moment your productivity catapults.

How Do I Know What I Need, If I Don’t Know What I’m Missing?

March 1, 2018 by Ari Meisel

Every good craftsperson treasures their tools.

The excellent mechanics or carpenters or welders organize them on a shadow board, a peg board that not only holds the tools but has an outline or shadow of each. Obviously, that makes it more efficient for organizing tools, because everything goes in its proper place.

But more importantly, it lets you know what tools are missing.

If you have your tools on just a blank board, there’s nothing there to let you know that your claw hammer has gone missing, again. And you only know the claw hammer is gone, when you are frantically looking for it.

So if you are working with multiple people and the same resources, shadow boards are a good check in — check out process for the tools you share.

What, Ari does this have to do with automation?

The absence of something is a crucial element of productivity because often it’s not about knowing where things go, it’s about knowing what is missing.

For example, there are almost no triggers that I know of in an automated process that is based on the absence of action.

In Zapier for example, I can create a new Airtable card, that is a trigger, but there’s nothing in Zapier (yet) that says, “When there is no activity on this new Airtable card in two days, then “x” happens.”

Only a human being can detect what is missing. Any person who understands a shadow board can tell you when the claw hammer is missing. Anyone who builds systems and processes knows where to find the holes.

So that’s what I do. I look at systems and processes. I test them out and find the holes. Sometimes I have to dismantle the structure and begin again and sometimes; the fix is as simple as tracing an outline around a hammer.

The Hack I Use the Most

February 6, 2018 by Ari Meisel

When I think about IFTTT, I think about this cool thing a friend told me. “In business,” she said, “just look for two patterns: what gets people stuck, and what gets them unstuck.”

It’s entirely applicable to IFTTT because the platform has isolated all the annoying, mind-numbing, bottlenecks we encounter every day at home or work and has supplied a friendly, expeditious solution. (Sort of like me, but without the whole carbon-based organism stuff).

IFTTT is a post-it note system that actually works.

The Basics

IFTTT is short for “If this, then that,” and it’s built on the simple notion of cause and effect.

Kind of like when your toddler drops a spoon (or a bowl full of cereal) off the high chair. What happens next? Someone picks it up. The game begins.

On IFTTT these actions are called “recipes.” Like a link or image on Facebook? IFTTT will automatically save it to the destination of your choice.

There is an enormous number of IFTTT channels available and it can in and of itself become quite the rabbit hole, as you find yourself exploring areas you never thought needed IFTTT’s brand of optimization.

So keep your search for solutions timely and precise.

IFTTT currently supports over 70 different channels spanning a wide range of services, and it can perform basic actions such as calling or texting a phone or sending you an email.

Once you’ve gone through and activated a few channels, which gives IFTTT access to your various services or provides it with personal details — you’re ready to start.

But wait. Here’s where you control the technology, you don’t let it control you. And it will save you lots of time.

It’s important to remember that there is a vast difference between idea capture and idea brainstorming.

I get A LOT of ideas during the day. But they are just ideas. I can’t allow myself to fall prey to “Shiny Object Syndrome,” where every flash of inspiration leads me down a road I shouldn’t be concentrating on then, throwing me way off track.

So I just capture ideas. I don’t pursue them and IFTTT is my preferred method.

When I’m in a more contemplative, creative space at the end of my day, I can sort through these ideas more efficiently. But during the day, I don’t let the low focus of an idea get in the way of the high focus of my meetings and decision making.

It’s a process that protects my mind space, and it works.

Here’s how I file all my screenshots on any day that ends in “Y.”

Now all I do is go over these screenshots at a time convenient to me; usually, after the kids are in bed. Everything is in one place. So I’m not hunting through twenty different open tabs looking for that next big idea.

This story is published in Noteworthy, where 10,000+ readers come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.

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How Are Your Resolutions Working Out?

January 22, 2018 by Ari Meisel

Did Sharon give up her Pall Malls? Did Connie finally swear off chocolate and gin? What about Bert? Those thirty extra pounds he’d gained since leaving the Army, did he lose them?

Guess what?

Our parents and grandparents were no better at sticking to Mel Torme-induced, whiskey sour-soaked resolutions than we are.

It’s not a generational thing, it’s a mindset thing.

In fact, did you know that only 8% of people actually achieve the New Year’s Resolutions they set for themselves? This is often because most of our goals are not actually achievable and we have no real plan to accomplish them. So we smoke, drink, eat, fail, over and over again.

At Less Doing, we believe in setting small, achievable, and effective micro-goals.

So instead of “write book”, you can “write 500 words each day”.

Instead of “get better sleep”, your goal could be “turn of all screens at 8pm”.

Rather than, “lose forty pounds, the intention can be, “no sugar after dinner.”

Here’s a video I did recently that may help explain this better.

So, dream big, but fill each day with small productive wins. Take the stairs once, instead of the elevator. Make one call you don’t want to, compliment a coworker you dislike. Forgo Netflix for one chapter of a book before bed.

The successes will build up slowly but naturally, will alter your perspective in a truly positive way and provide a really strong foundation for progress.

Now, isn’t that a whole lot more productive?

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