Book Review – The Power of Less
The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta
Leo Babauta is the author of the Zen Habits blog which is now one of the Top 100 blogs in the world. His blog is based on his inspiring story of changing his life beginning with quitting smoking, becoming a vegetarian, running marathons, turning his financial life around, creating a blog with 100,000 readers. The theme of his blog if you haven't read it yet is simplicity, doing less, enjoying more by being absorbed in the moment. It's a simple, focused message that permeates every area of life if you adopt if fully.
This book is a simple, short, quick read at 170 pages. If you have read Getting Things Done and Four-Hour Work Week, you will find many familiar topics, but consistent with its title, its presented with fewer words. For those not familiar with David Allen's Getting Things Done approach, this book is an excellent introduction to the core behaviors of GTD.
What I like so much about the book that I think GTD misses is the focus on simplicity and eliminating the non-essential. Where GTD is great for getting a handle on your busy life and getting more done. Power of Less is more about being less busy and doing the things that really matter.
The book discusses Leo's approach to building new habits which is simple and powerful. He seems to have a good track record of applying it with success. Definitely worth reading.
One of the real strengths of the book in my opinion is his very simple approach to having One Goal and having a simple, manageable number of projects, and picking your Most Important Tasks everyday. With GTD it can be really easy to focus on cranking through tons of Projects and Next actions because you can, even if those things don't really matter that much. Leo's approach is wonderful for stripping life down to the bare-essentials. (I suspect David Allen would disagree with my characterization of GTD and we'll be reviewing his recent book next month).
There are a number of how-to sections toward the end of the book like: simple filing, simple e-mail, simple internet, simple committments, tips of getting fit. None of these break any new ground but offer reasonable advice. Some of it seems a bit overly simplistic, like his suggestion that you don't schedule appointments, you just ask people to call you a bit before they would like to meet and see if you are free. For anyone who is at all busy and doesn't have an administrative assistant this seems like a recipe for inviting massive disruption into ones life.
Overall I'm not sure what I think of books that take blog content freely available and put them into book form (Leo seems to have similar mis-givings), but as a standalone book this is a worthy effort and worth reading, especially if you aren't already deeply familiar with the zenhabits blog.
In future book reviews I will summarize the 3 main things I got out of the book
The 3 Big Things
- Focus on the Essential and Simplify
- One Goal, 3 Projects (only add new when all 3 are done), and Most Important Tasks
- Implement one new habit at a time.
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