REMASTERED: Less Stress, More Productivity, with Ari Meisel (Time Management, Email, Tech, Business)

Author, entrepreneur, and “overwhelmologist” Ari Meisel reveals how to optimize, automate, and outsource, gives a masterclass in Virtual Assistants 101, explains what delegation REALLY means, and breaks down the "3D" inbox zero plan.

Episode Transcript

Host (00:00):
This gentleman you're about to hear from. His name is

(00:02):
Ari Meisel. He has an amazingstory. He was diagnosed with an
incurable and very painfulchronic condition, which we're
going to talk about, and I'lllet him tell you about it, and
the strategy that he used tosave his life and get his life
back also then turned into asystem of productivity that he

(00:26):
has built a huge onlinefollowing around now teaching
people how to do this. Thesystem's called Less Doing and
More Living. So Ari, thanks forbeing here. Just tell everyone
like, what's your story? Whatwas the condition you had to
kind of tell us what thetrajectory your life was on, and
then what change you made, andwhat was the result of that?

Ari Meisel (00:45):
So, I was working in construction. I was in real
estate development in upstateNew York, and I was, I was
living a very hard lifestyle. Iwas working, you know, 1618,
hours a day in not the safestconditions. I was smoking a pack
of cigarettes a day. I waseating fast food, drinking
stress beyond my mind, andbasically broke myself. When I
was 23 I was diagnosed withCrohn's disease, which, as you

(01:07):
mentioned, is an incurableillness, and it was a very, very
rough for a few years, and I wason a lot of meds, and I kept
getting sicker, and thenbasically had this big
turnaround where I went on thislong journey of self tracking
and self experimentation. Andabout four months after that, I
got off my meds, and two monthslater, was in my first

(01:27):
triathlon. And the way that thatsort of all confluenced into
creating what I do now is that Iwent from a place where I was
working 18 hours a day to barelybeing able to do an hour of work
a day, and I was also stressedout of my mind. So less doing
basically, was born out of thisneed to mitigate stress and get
more done in one hour than I hadbeen able to get done in a full
day before.

Host (01:47):
And so before we dive into kind of how that applies in the
professional world, what weresome of the things that
happened? What are some of thethings that you did?

Ari Meisel (01:55):
Well I did a lot of experimentation, but I ended up
with a high fat, low sugar diet.So that was a big one exercise,
not that I recommend Iron Man,but exercise to the extent that
I was really ramping up mymetabolism. So I was able, in my
opinion, to burn through food alot better. Which one of the
issues with Crohn's is that youend up getting obstructions
because you have all thescarring. So that was helpful.

(02:15):
And then it really all came backto stress, you know, because you
can tell somebody, and I'vereplicated my results in dozens
of other Crohn's patients atthis point, but you can tell
somebody, Hey, you want to feelbetter, eat this, take these
supplements and do theseexercises, and it's
prescriptive, and they can do itor not do it. But if you say to
somebody, okay, now you need tomanage your stress, it's, it's

(02:37):
way more nebulous. You know,it's a lot harder for people to
sort of get their hands aroundthat. So I wanted to create a
really systematic way of doingthat. So the overall framework,
the baseline framework, is thatI help people optimize, automate
and outsource everything intheir lives, including their
health, in order to be moreeffective. And it's just a very
important order for me, becausemost people in the modern world

(02:59):
have an experience withdelegation, even if it's just
telling your kids to do theirchores. But the problem is, is
that a lot of people get intothis mode where they tell
somebody to do something, andthat's it. That's the end of it.
And that's not true delegation.And really what you're just
doing is basically sweeping thedirt under the rug. It doesn't
make the problem any better.You're just shifting it to
someone else, and in most cases,that will come back to you

(03:22):
right. The pipes got to back up.So you have to optimize first.
And with optimization, what I'mreally talking about with most
people is tracking becausethere's so much going on in our
lives, so many inputs, so muchstuff, and a lot of the
overwhelm that people experienceis because they just don't know
what's causing the overwhelm. Soif you start to track things,
and whether it's how many emailsyou sent yesterday, how many
steps you took today, how muchsleep you got, what you ate, how

(03:44):
many phone calls you made, andhow long they lasted, like all
of this stuff that we do now canbe tracked pretty much
automatically, and even if youdon't do anything with that
information, just tracking it,it has been proven to be really
powerful in terms of giving usback a little element of
control. Hopefully, what you dowith that information is start
to identify how you wereactually spending your time,
your money, your energy, yourresources, and then look at the

(04:05):
processes that you're goingthrough to see areas that you
can make more efficient. Thesecond part of automation is
really my playground now,because so many things can be
automated today, we we canautomate things now for free, in
many cases that three monthsago, a person had to do. It's
just fascinating what technologyhas done for us. So you optimize
for us, then you automate whatautomate what you can and then
if there's anything left over,that's the first time you look

(04:26):
at outsourcing it to aspecialist or generalist of some
kind.

Host (04:30):
In terms of measuring like, what are, what are some of
the common things that you seeor you find that you go these.
These are the things that peopleare doing that are causing them
overwhelm that they don'trealize are causing them
overwhelm?

Ari Meisel (04:44):
So there's two sides to that equation. Right on the
one side, you have the day today stuff that just annoys
people, you know, like makinglunch, making school lunch every
day. That's something that'sjust, you know, it's difficult,
especially for people who arenine to five jobs. It's
stressful. It really is. And Ihave three young boys, and I. Do
it. We do it every day, but it'salso something that definitely
can be made more efficient, andthere are ways to do that.

(05:05):
Paying bills, those are thekinds of things that almost
everybody has experience with.How you commute to work is
something that can be made moreefficient, whether it's not
necessarily the route, butthere's a lot of things you can
do while you are in transit thatpeople don't necessarily think
that they can get doneespecially like, for example,
you could have a virtualassistant do all your email with

(05:26):
you on the phone while you'redriving, which is totally fine.
You could dictate an entire bookif you wanted to while you were
driving. You know, there's allsorts of things that you can get
done in a commute. I mean, and alot of people, that's a really
effective strategy. But thenthere's the other side of it.
There's the really big projectsthat people wrongly assume have
to be done by them so they'llnever get done. And they assume

(05:48):
that because, like, who couldpossibly do this? But what they
don't realize is that there aretons of services or tons of ways
to get that done. My father is agreat example. I was having
dinner with him last night, andhe was saying that he's got this
collection of photographs thathe'd really like to sell. He's
like, but I have to photographhim. And then I was like, Dad,
we can have literally two peoplecome and do that whole thing for
you, from the photographing itto the cataloging, to the

(06:09):
putting it on eBay to theshipping. I was like, you can
just say, do it, and I can getthis done with no effort on
either of our parts. And it's soit's that kind of thing too,
where people just, they justdon't and it's not their fault.
They're just not aware of thefact that there are these
services and there's people thatare available to do this stuff
for you.

Host (06:27):
So I want to talk to you about the world of virtual
assistants. Tell us, like, whatdo we need to know about them?
Where are they? How do you usethem? What do you use them for?

Ari Meisel (06:35):
Okay, so it's great question. I'll tell you what the
industry looked like and whatthere is now. So the landscape,
as it was, was there were twokinds of virtual assistants, and
I've been a huge, huge fan ofvirtual assistant services for a
long time. I've tested 23 ofthem over the last five years,
and learned a lot, obviously,from doing that. I actually
think that everybody should workwith a virtual assistant at some

(06:57):
point, especially if you're in anine to five job or a corporate
environment, because it's alearning experience for you in
terms of how you effectivelycommunicate and delegate the
things that you want done. Sothere are two kinds of virtual
assistants. There's the ondemand assistant, which is the,
well, actually, I'll start withthe other one. There's a
dedicated assistant, which isfairly straightforward. It's

(07:17):
where you're dealing with oneperson, and they get to know you
and and, by the way, just todefine virtual assistant, it's
really just an assistant whoisn't in the room with you.
That's basically what it means.It could be across the across
town, or across the globe. Andhistorically, five years ago,
I'd say, if you really, if youwanted a virtual assistant, you
went to India. That was just theway it was. There was companies

(07:39):
like ask Sunday you had Fridaytasks, today tasks every day.
There was a bunch of them. Andthat was the place. But now it's
the last place that I would wantto get a virtual assistant from,
because the labor market forvirtual assistants there just
got completely flooded, and thequality went down quite a bit,
which, by the way, is aninteresting observation on
outsourcing in general. Becauseif you want to go to India for

(08:00):
outsourcing now, SEO is greatwhere, and this stuff shifts
around, like if you want to getgraphic design done now, Eastern
Europe is fantastic. Poland isgreat for programmers right now,
and Costa Rica is fantastic forcall centers. But that wasn't
the case two years ago. And Idon't know why that is, but I
just see these things if you ifyou do want to go out of country
for virtual assistant now, mostpeople would go to the

(08:22):
Philippines. The only problemwith that the Filipino language,
Tagalog is extremely facialexpression based. So when you're
communicating with a nativeFilipino speaker over email or
over a text message or chat,they what happens is they end up
taking the instructions very,very literally. So that's okay,
but that usually means that youhave to be very specific to with
what you're saying. Fortunately,now you can get virtual

(08:43):
assistants that are US based andwhich is great for a number of
reasons. Obviously, you getnative us speakers. You get
people who have a little bitbetter cultural context for some
of the things that you mighthave them do. Timezone is the
third one. So that's a dedicatedsystem where you have one person
you're always talking to them,that you can train them. They
can learn how you like doingthings, who you like to talk to,

(09:05):
where you like to go formeetings, all that kind of
stuff. The other side of it iswhat's known as the on demand
virtual assistant, and thatwould be something like fancy
hands, which I do recommend.It's a great company, and with
fancy hands, what you get isaccess to over 3000 assistants.
And you put your task into apool so you email it or leave a
voicemail, and any one of thoseassistants can pick it up, do it

(09:26):
and move on prem. Now, thebenefit to that is that it's
usually a lot cheaper,enormously cheaper, to have On
Demand assistance. You get 24/7,response time, because there's
always somebody awake that'sready to do something. You get
much faster response time.Typically within 10 minutes,
you'll have somebody onsomething, and you get people
from a wide variety ofbackgrounds and skill sets, the
downside is that they're limitedto tasks that take less than 20

(09:49):
minutes, because, you know, itjust that's the way it is.
There's no continuity. So ifyou're not good at describing
your tasks, then you're going tohave an issue. They can't make
big purchases for you. So whatwe have now, which is the let's
do us, is a hybrid. We.Basically have a dozen
assistants working with us rightnow, and what you get when you
work with us is access to thewhole team. And because they are

(10:10):
trained in less doingmethodology, they can you can
work with that team as if it wasworking with a dedicated
assistant. So every time they dotasks for clients, they're
helping create those processesand optimize them. They're
adding information to a verydetailed client dossier, so that
even if somebody were to quit orget sick or move on whatever,
then it doesn't matter, becausewe've created all this knowledge

(10:31):
base on how to work with thatclient. And of course, that
information is transferable toother clients. So what that
means is that we actually aremore like on demand project
managers, because you couldnever tell a virtual assistant
produce a podcast. That's justway too big of a thing. We can
do that. So what we're tryingto, what I've been basically
trying to position this as, issomething that the market is

(10:51):
missing, where people can saywhat they want done and we
figure out the rest, so theydon't have to know how to hire
people or what the best resourceis to get particular aspects
done, we can do that.

Host (11:01):
What kind of cost range are you looking for? For this
kind of thing?

Ari Meisel (11:06):
Typically with the Philippines, you're looking at
between eight and $20 an hour,and you have to look at,
obviously, a cost benefitanalysis in terms of quality of
the labor and the skill set thatyou're getting. And you know, if
somebody's a quarter of theprice, but it takes them four
times as long, or they have toredo it four times. That's
obviously a problem.

Host (11:23):
The question is, how much rework is has to be done? How
much training, just the fearthat somebody else who doesn't
work in my company every day isgoing to actually be able to do
this effectively.

Ari Meisel (11:33):
Well and see that, which is one of my favorite
things to do for people, becauseI have taken I've never seen a
process that I could notsystematize in a way that
somebody could do it without anytraining. And I mean that, you
know, so from very, very complexprocesses, too, it's really just
a matter of breaking it down toits most basic chunks and
automating as much as possible,by the way, so that there is no

(11:55):
that, you know, we don't evenhave to worry about human
involvement that could possiblymess up something, and then the
stuff that's left to actually bedone by a human is not
stupefied, but it's really justmade into a checklist that is
easy enough to follow. Anddoctors, surgeons and pilots,
who have done procedures 1000sof times, still use checklists
so that they don't miss things.Proper delegation is when you

(12:19):
effectively communicate yourneeds to somebody to the extent
that they can take it and runwith it to the point of being
able to overcome certain hurdleson their own without having to
come back to you so that you cango back to doing what you do
best and not managing that person.

Host (12:34):
Interesting. Let's just talk about the inbox. That's the
big, mammoth beast that everyonestruggles with and creates the
stress for the professionalworld, and you have the Inbox
Zero plan.

Ari Meisel (12:45):
Yeah, absolutely. So really simple, three Ds. You can
only deal with an email once,and this, and it's one of the
three Ds. The first one is todelete it because it's not
relevant or doesn't require aresponse. And I would tell you
that 40% of the emails thatpeople respond to don't actually
require a response. If you'veever found yourself sending an
email that said, thanks, orgreat, don't The second is to

(13:05):
deal with it. If you can dealwith something in the next three
minutes, deal with it right now,because there won't be a magical
three minutes later. And I don'tmean click it, mark it unread
and be like, Okay, I'll comeright back to it. No. Deal with
it right now. That could includea little subset D, which will be
delegating it so you can passthat off to an assistant or a
spouse or a coworker, and thethird one is the most

(13:27):
interesting. So if you can'tdelete it and you can't deal
with it right now, then you needto defer it to a time that you
can more effectively deal withit. And for that, I recommend
something called Follow up.cc soyou can forward that email to
8pm at follow up.cc or Thursdayat follow up.cc or one week at
follow up.cc whatever timeperiod you think might make the
most sense for you to actuallybe able to effectively deal with

(13:48):
that, and it will then come backto your inbox at that time so
that you can and the mosteffective time to deal with it
is not just because you havefree time. It's also because you
are maybe in a better state todo that, or because you have
more information, or whatever itmight be, and that's basically
the strategy.

Host (14:04):
Well Ari, I think where do you want people to go to connect
and learn more about you and allthe different things that you
have going on?

Ari Meisel (14:11):
They can just go to lessdoing.com, they can find out
about the podcast, the book, theblog, everything is there.

Host (14:18):
Well, Ari, keep inspiring people and keep preaching the
good word, my friend.

Ari Meisel (14:23):
Always a pleasure to talk to you.