Book Review - The Power of Less

Leo Babauta from the amazing blog, Zen Habits, has written a new book called The Power of Less. It's a really great book!

From organizing your email and decluttering your home to motivating you to loose weight and start exercising, this book succinctly covers the gamut in just 18 short chapters spanning 170 pages. I love his big picture viewpoint sprinkled with tactical how-to's. Leo distilled each item to its essentials without leaving out the heart.

Leo comes across as such a humble guy, you believe him when he says that it's easy to build up to exercising 40 min a day 5 days a week. His final chapter, On Motivation, gives you some great insight into how he went from being an overweight smoker to a marathon runner in just a few years. He has me convinced that if we find ways to effectively motivate ourselves, we could all accomplish great things too.

While the book cover claims that it is written in the spirit of The 4-Hour Workweek, I think The Power of Less is a much better approach. While the 4 hour work week left me thinking that only way to prioritize my goals was to be a selfish jerk to people, The Power of Less gives you ways to say no without being mean or deceptive.

I would say that this book is more in the spirit of Getting Things Done, but with a stronger focus on personal well being rather than pure accomplishment.

While I originally borrowed this book from my library, I ended up buying a copy to keep. This is one of those books where you extract more understanding with each read through. I wanted to have it around to come back to again and again.