Prologue: Accomplish More

There is an old story of a man riding very fast on a horse. As he rides past his friend standing on the side of the road, the friend yells, “Where are you going?” The rider turns toward his friend and yells, “I don’t know, ask the horse!”

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like that person riding that frantically galloping horse. Our daily incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time; the pressure to produce and tick off items on our to-do list by each day’s end — seems to decide the direction and quality of our existence for us. But if we approach our days in a different way, we can consciously change this out-of-control pattern. It only requires the courage to do less. This may sound easy, but doing less can actually be very hard. Too often we mistakenly believe that doing less makes us lazy and results in a lack of productivity. Instead, doing less helps us savor what we do accomplish. We learn to do less of what is extraneous, and engage in fewer self-defeating behaviors, so we craft a productive life that we truly feel good about.

Just doing less for its own sake can be simple, startling, and transformative. Imagine having a real and unhurried conversation in the midst of an unrelenting workday with someone you care about. Imagine completing one discrete task at a time and feeling calm and happy about it. In this book, I offer a new approach — what I call a “Less” Manifesto (and, by the way, that my name is Lesser is strictly a coincidence!) — that follows a five-step practice. I focus mostly on our work life, but the approach is equally useful for our personal life. In fact, the two hemispheres of our work and personal lives constantly reflect on and affect each other, each changing and/or reinforcing the other. And while the program requires some explaining on my part and patience on yours, I promise it is simple and enjoyable to follow.

Every life has great meaning, but the meaning of our own can often be obscured by the fog of constant activity and plain bad habits. Recognize and change these, and we can again savor deeply the ways we contribute to the workplace, enjoy the sweetness of our lives, and share openly and generously with the ones we love. Less busyness leads to appreciating the sacredness of life. Doing less leads to more love, more effectiveness and internal calmness, and a greater ability to accomplish more of what matters most — to us, and by extension to others and the world.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE: Accomplish More xiii

PART I
THE OVERWHELMING BUSYNESS OF OUR LIVES

CHAPTER 1: The Immense Sea 3
CHAPTER 2: The Art of Less 13

PART II
TRANSFORMING BUSYNESS INTO COMPOSURE AND RESULTS

CHAPTER 3: The Less Manifesto 29
CHAPTER 4: Fear 37
CHAPTER 5: Assumptions 65
CHAPTER 6: Distractions 89
CHAPTER 7: Resistance 113
CHAPTER 8: Busyness, or Finding the One Who Is Not Busy 133

Epilogue 155
Acknowledgments 161
Sources and Recommended Reading 163
Index 165
About the Author

Testimonials

A wise, compassionate, and insightful guide to finding spaciousness in the only place it truly exists: inside your own mind, heart, and life."
—Jane Hirshfield, poet

"If only I had had Marc's insight into my personal busyness earlier
in my life, I would have been able to save thousands of
heartbeats to spend with my grandchildren. The quiet perspective
of Less will change how one works and how one lives."
— Warren Langley, former president of the Pacific Stock
Exchange and managing member of GuruWizard Fund, LLC

"Like all great ideas, Less is disarmingly simple: know who you are,
what you want to accomplish and why, and just do it, with a minimum
of fuss and a maximum of joy. With gentle wisdom and real world
common sense, Marc Lesser effortlessly integrates profound
spiritual wisdom into a clear and doable program for sane self improvement,
whatever the challenges of your work or life."
— Norman Fischer, poet, Zen abbot and teacher, and author of
Sailing Home: Using the Wisdom of Homer's Odyssey
to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls

"An author who offers a book titled Less: Accomplishing More by
Doing Less either really knows what he 's talking about or is perpetrating
a commercial fraud. Marc Lesser knows, and this valuable
work is so loaded with practical, applicable insights and
suggestions to simplify work and daily existence that after reading
it I felt that I should be studying at Marc's feet. Marc and I
have practiced Zen Buddhism in the same community for over
thirty years. Yet I was surprised on page after page by how much
I learned (and needed to learn) from my calm and unassuming
friend. Give your daily life and work a spring cleaning by following
the practices and path suggested in this book."
— Peter Coyote, actor and writer

"Marc Lesser dives into one of the most pervasive and persistent
difficulties of our time — overwhelming busyness — with
courage, deep practical know-how, profound spiritual understanding,
and kindness. Any reader will be able to take up the
methods he proposes to great and immediate effect — reducing
stress and improving productivity with what really matters. You'll
feel met and understood as you read and yet challenged to examine
your actions, habits, and beliefs. Insights will abound, but the
real payoff is taking them into your everyday life, and Marc shows
dozens of ways to do that. Less goes way beyond most self-help
books — yet stays within everyone's reach. Quite amazing."
— James Flaherty, founder of New Ventures West Integral
Coaching and author of Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others

Book Description

A certain kind of busyness is crucial to life, allowing us to earn a living, create art, and achieve success. But too often it consumes us and we become crazy busy, nonstop busy, and we expend extraneous effort that gets us nowhere. Marc Lesser's new book shows us the benefits of doing less in a world that has increasingly embraced more - more desire, more activity, more things, more exhaustion. Less is about stopping, about the possibility of finding composure in the midst of activity. The ideas and practices that Lesser outlines offer a radical yet simple approach to transforming a lifestyle based on endless to-do lists into a more meaningful approach that is truly more productive in every sense.