Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less

Feeling weighed down recently, I purchased 4 books about decluttering: Less,  The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life , Unclutter Your Life in One Week , and  The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul . Here is a comparison of them.Less is not really about decluttering so much as Zen. The book is more about less busyness than less stuff. It is about mindfulness. It is about facing fears. It is business-oriented. For someone interested in cultivating a minimalist approach to living, Less does not have that much to offer. It is really aimed at business people who need to stay focused and productive.The 100 Thing Challenge is more the sort of book I had in mind to buy. Written by a man who spent a year living with only 100 possessions, it is an anti-consumerist tract. It has some limited practical advice, but it is more about the experience of doing without things than a how-to.The Joy of Less and Unclutter Your Life in One Week are both how-to books, but they are rather different in focus. The Joy of Less takes a single systematic approach to decluttering (represented by the acronym STREAMLINE) and shows how it might be applied to decluttering various parts of your home. Unclutter Your Life in One Week has a more shot-gun approach, suggesting a variety of different methods for organizing and reducing clutter.Are any of the books worth buying?What I was really looking for was a book that would delve into research a little and identify what areas of life make the most difference in minimalizing and what that difference might be. None of these books took that approach. The how-to books are based on sensible advice and suggest that you will feel better by living in a simpler, more organized space, but that is all hearsay. Maybe you are a creative person with a lot of hobbies. Will throwing things out really improve your life?These books might be helpful to you if you aren't good at organizing your things already. At one time or another, many of the suggestions in Joy of Less or Unclutter Your Life are things I figured out on my own. I think if you have a natural propensity to live a minimalist and organized lifestyle, none of these books are going to have anything of value for you. But if your living space is overflowing with things you can't figure out how to deal with, you might learn something from either of these how-to books. If your problem is that you buy too many things, you might want to check out the 100 Thing Challenge.If you are interested in the sustainability impact of minimalism, you might also be interested in  No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process  or  Better Off .

Accomplishing More with Less is great! It makes you look at how you work and what you want to accomplish. The accomplishment zone discussion made me realize why my work group wasn't getting things done as effectively as we could of. Our group has an open door policy. After everyone read Pierre's advice we changed it so we do our collaboration at the top of the hour (unless it's urgent). It is already paying off. We are learning to group things together and change how we work.Turning off my email new message reminder was the best thing I've ever done. I'm getting more accomplished because I don't see the little reminder in the corner of my screen every time a new message pops up so I don't check my mail immediately.The two matrices mentioned in the book help to get your work aligned with your goals. The system is flexible and can be used in conjunction with things from some of the other productivity gurus.The author has lots of other tidbits and useful information on his website and through his blog [...].

The title Accomplishing More by Doing Less is certainly a very useful tagline for me. I have been exploring this idea for the past few years. Unfortunately, i'm not a very good speaker. it is very difficult for me to translate it to those around me. When i chance upon this book, my gut feeling was, this is it. i can use it to spread this simple truth. Bought 5 books from amazon and i have been passing to friends around me. and i hope they will in turn spread this further to a much need urbanize global village of ours.

Lesser (his name and the book title are coincidental) combines his experiences as an MBA CEO with those of teaching Zen. His narrative and exercises help you to come to terms with what your life is really about. In that context you learn to select your activities and organize your life artfully in spite of living in a culture addicted to busyness. Both challenging and inspiring.

Great insights about taking time to reflect amid the busyness of our lives. Doing less to get more done is a radical concept today, but the author provides practical ideas to implement.

This is a great book for anyone running a coaching practice, for the leader whose team complains of being perpetually busy and exhausted, for anyone who wants to find ways to find themselves in the a world that can sometimes threaten to overwhelm our spirit, for those people who want to have direction and stop being a pinball in the game of life.

Overall, there is some great meditation-focused advice in this book. What would have made it more useful to me is if it had included a workbook to make me more inclined to try the suggestedexercises. As it stands, it seems I need to re-read the book just to find them all again...

Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less  I love this book. The quiet reminder to "sing my song" has helped me focus on what is important to me and be more effective in the use of my time and attention. I would recommend this to any busy executive trying to maintain balance in this hectic world we move in.

Viele Aha Momente da, sehr inspirierend und interessant. Das Buch hilft sich und andere besser zu akzeptieren und liest sich sehr angenehm, Marc hilft mir Dinge von einem anderen Standpunkt zu betrachten. Toll!

If you're looking for a good book on meditation and doing less/minimalism this is the book for you. Definitely worth the read.