Simplicity: Confront, Delete, Amplify — Getting 50% More Done with 50% Less with Roy Schwartz

Simplicity and decision fatigue are the focus of this conversation with Roy Schwartz, co-founder and president of Axios.

Roy Schwartz co-founded Axios and Axios HQ after helping build Politico, where he first saw how much of modern work is just noise competing for attention. His dyslexia forced him to compress everything down to the core just to keep up — a coping strategy that became the foundation for Smart Brevity and, later, his new book Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less, co-written with his Axios co-founders.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Confront, Delete, Amplify: Roy's three-step framework for finding where your time actually goes, cutting what doesn't serve your real goals, and redirecting that time toward the few things you're genuinely good at.
• Why delete is harder than it sounds: the evolutionary pull to accumulate — meetings, reports, obligations — and why saying no requires deciding what you're protecting time for, not just what you're cutting.
• Decision fatigue and the handcuffs method: how removing small daily choices (clothing, groceries, consumables) frees up mental bandwidth for decisions that actually matter.
• AI as both the problem and the fix: why the same tool producing more content than ever can also become your most honest editor — if you give it the right instructions.
• The four levers of a whole life: relationships, fitness, diet, and sleep — and why Roy ranks relationships first, even in a book built by a productivity nerd.

This episode is for anyone who feels like their calendar, inbox, or life in general has gotten away from them and suspects the answer isn't a better system — it's fewer things. Roy's framework gives you a place to start today: one decision, one meeting, one "no."

Connect with Roy:

• Simplify — the book
• Smart Brevity free resources

Connect with Erik:

• LinkedIn
• Threads
• Facebook
• Bluesky

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