Do Less, Get More: How to Work Smart and Live Life Your Way

We—all of us, it seems—can get so busy and caught up in constantly getting caught up, that we feel like we can't take a break, relax, and refocus, when that is really what we need most of all. We watch our personal and vacation hours pile up, unused, and think "if only I had the time." We fear things will fall apart without us and our constant attention to the details—that we'll leave and come back to chaos.

Yet, when we're inevitably forced to take some time off, we find the world keeps spinning, the company keeps chugging along just as well without us. And then we realize: we're not quite as important as we thought we were. I think most of us have been there, but we took the wrong lesson. We actually are as important as we think we are; it's the things we're getting bogged down in that aren't necessarily as important as we thought. Much, if not most, of our busyness doesn't amount to much.

Most people seem to believe they need to do more, when really they just need to do what matters.

If we could find a way to clear the brush and busyness away and give ourselves and our time fully to those things and people that truly matter—to us, to our happiness and success, to our productivity and the work we do—we could accomplish much more while actually doing less.

Shaa Wasmund's new book, Do Less, Get More: How to Work Smart and Live Life Your Way, like last week's Book Giveaway, I Know How She Does It, asks us to take stock, to consider what's truly important. But, unlike Laura Vanderkam's wonderful book, Wasmund's is not a book specifically about time management, and the audience is more general. Whereas Vanderkam's book is geared toward women (even though I make an argument that many men fit in her target audience, including me), and women who are organized and disciplined enough to keep a time-log for a set period of time (maybe not so much me), Shaa Wasmund's new book, Do Less, Get More: How to Work Smart and Live Life Your Way, is for the disorganized and disheveled among us, too.

It is for anyone who has something to change and the desire to do so. It's particularly useful for those with short attention spans and tight schedules. People who want to know how, not just why.

I thought about calling this book How to Get More Out of Life, but it isn't about 'getting more stuff'. This book is about taking what you already have and making the most of it—and in order to do so you may need to let go of a few things in the process. It's about squeezing every last drop out of your life while you have the time to appreciate it.

Letting go can be scary. Depending on what you're letting go of, it can feel very risky. Shaa Wasmund will help you see the new and unknown as a chance rather than a risk. She will help you understand what it is you can contribute that's unique to you, and to accept and tune into your own rhythms to do it—and to ditch or delegate the things that need to be.

In the end, she will ask you to:

Ask yourself a simple question: if there was one thing you could do today if you had no fear or distractions or excuses, what would it be?

STOP. The world won't end. Often your 'busyness' just creates more confusion. You need clarity, and to get that you have to stop and take yourself out of your usual routine, even for just for a day.

FOCUS on getting just ONE area of your life where you feel out of control back in control. Instead of spreading your efforts thinly, concentrate on just one thing. One thing will lead to another.

ASK for help. Just remember, it's always easier to find solutions for other people and to offer help to them. So in turn let someone else help you.

These are the three simple things I want you to take from this book and keep for whenever you need them, for whatever is getting in the way of the things and the people that matter.

And it is simple. This isn't a book about rebalancing all the work we do; it's about paring it down and refocusing it. Because our busyness is largely our own creation, and so must our better life be.

We can stop the busy work and start the real work by picking up a copy of Shaa Wasmund's Do Less, Get More.

We have 20 copies available.