Focus. Part 6

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

Lao Tzu.

There's a concept in Taoism, "wei wu wei", which is often translated as "action without action" or "effortless doing". I prefer to think of it more in the sense of "action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort".

This is an important concept, because effortless action is a way to not only achieve focus in a world of chaos, but to be effective without stress, to respond to any situation with economy of effort and action, and to pursue our pa.s.sions while beating procrastination.

Think for a moment of times when you've struggled to work, and instead procrastinated by heading for your distractions -- email, social networks, blog reading, games, whatever your flavor might be.

This struggle is often a losing battle for most people. They fight against it, but only win occa.s.sionally.

Effortless action is an easier way to find focus and beat procrastination.

be like water.

An appropriate mental image is that of water, which seems naturally effortless in its action. It isn't necessarily still, nor is it pa.s.sive, but it flows naturally around obstacles and always gets to where it's going.

This is effortless action. It uses gravity and the natural contours of its landscape, instead of forcing things. Water can never be anything but effortless, and yet it is quietly powerful.

Be like water. Flow, respond to the landscape, move around obstacles, and be graceful in your movement.

position yourself effortlessly within the moment.

In "The Civility Solution", academic P.M. Forni writes: "We must learn to position ourselves effortlessly within each moment, rather than stumbling through time. We can either escape from the moment or stay with it as it unfolds and do something good with it."

And this is exactly right. Are you trying to escape the moment, fleeing from it and struggling against it? Or are you inhabiting the moment effortlessly?

One way to do this is to stop yourself when you find yourself struggling, and just pause. Be present, sensing your breath, and then everything around you. See the situation with some objectivity, instead of fleeing from it blindly. Carefully consider your options -- all of them. And then respond to the situation mindfully and with the appropriate response -- not an overreaction.

In this way, you respond flexibly, appropriately, and effortlessly.

steps for effortless action.

There is no step-by-step guide to learning effortless action, but here are some things you might try: Act because of pa.s.sion. Not because you "should", but because you're excited to do so. It will feel as if you're going downhill, because it's what you want to do.

When you're going uphill, change course. Whenever you find yourself dreading something, procrastinating, forcing yourself and hating it, stop and ask yourself why. There must be a reason -- you'll never sustain any action for long if you hate doing it. Change course to something you're more excited about, and things will get easier. You may end up getting to the same destination, but you'll do it with a different course and things will flow more naturally.

Don't try to control what you can't control. When we try to control others, or obsessively control our surroundings, we are trying to control things that aren't in our control. This will inevitably end up in failure, frustration, and conflict with others. Instead, accept that we can't control these things, and flow around the obstacles with a minimum of effort.

Be in the moment. Be aware of the full situation, accept the situation, and respond appropriately.

See the possibilities. When we have our minds set, and our vision set, on one destination, we are often blind to other possibilities. We'll miss opportunities this way. Instead, see all the possible paths and pick the one that will work best for you. That doesn't mean to become indecisive because there are so many choices -- to be paralyzed by choice -- but instead to learn to move effortlessly among all the possible paths instead of being stuck on one path. This gets easier with practice, as you learn to trust your intuition.

Be flexible. When we are rigid, we will often break. Be like water, flowing around obstacles rather than trying to push them out of your way.

Find the pressure points. Sometimes, if you find the right spot, achieving something takes very little effort. Hitting a baseball with the sweet spot of the bat will cause it to go much further with less effort. Finding these spots of maximum effectiveness and minimum effort takes mindful effort, which is why effortless action isn't mindless action.

Do less and less, with less and less effort. Effortless action isn't something that is achieved overnight. In fact, if you try too hard to achieve it, you've defeated yourself already. Instead, when you find yourself in a whirlwind of activity, and pushing hard, slow down, relax, and do less. Eliminate some of your motions so that you're moving with economy. Push less, and flow more. Slowly learn to do less, and then do less, finding ways of doing that require little action but lots of effectiveness. Learn to let things unfold naturally instead of pushing them to happen. Let people learn on their own instead of controlling them. Set things up so they happen without you having to steer everything. Slowly learn to use less effort, and then less than that.

Antic.i.p.ate the difficult by managing the easy. Another famous quote by Lao Tzu, it's timeless and wise. If you can manage the easy, small things now, you'll save yourself the time and effort of having to do the difficult things later. This allows for more effortless action -- you work less to achieve the same results.

5: three strategies for prioritizing tasks.

"If you chase two rabbits, both will escape."

unknown.

One of the biggest problems people have when trying to find focus is having too many tasks competing for their time. It can be tough to prioritize.

Let's break this problem into three smaller problems: too many tasks.

tough to prioritize.

tasks compete for your time.

And with that, let's discuss three strategies for dealing with these smaller problems.

1. reduce your tasks.

If you have too many tasks, the solution is to simplify your task list. Take 10 minutes to list everything you need to do -- now just pick the 3-5 most important tasks. All the small tasks will go on a "do later" list, and you're not going to worry about them now.

A good way to deal with the smaller, routine tasks that must be done (check email, pay bills, fill out paperwork, and so on) is to schedule a block of time later in the day to deal with them -- perhaps the last 30 minutes of your day, or something like that. Early in the day, focus on the important tasks.

2. choose the task that excites you.

Now that you've simplified your task list, look at the 3-5 tasks left and pick one task. Just one.

How do you pick? Choose the task that most excites you, that feels compelling, that you're most pa.s.sionate about.

If you're dreading the task, put it aside for now, and pick something more interesting.

If you have several tasks you're excited about, you might also consider which task will have the biggest effect on your life. What will make the biggest impact?

3. single-task.

Now that you've chosen one task, put the others aside for now and just focus on that one task.

Clear away all distractions, including your mobile device and the Internet. Just have the application open that you need to work on that task.

Now get to work. Throw yourself into it, and do it for at least 10 minutes. After that, you can take a break, but try to immerse yourself for at least 10 minutes.

And have fun doing it.

6: letting go of goals.

"By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning."

Lao Tzu.

One of the unshakable tenets of success and productivity literature is that you need to have goals in order to be successful.

And from this tenet comes all sorts of other beliefs: You need to set goals the right way (such as the SMART method).

You need to break goals down into actionable tasks.

You need to have deadlines and timeframes.

You need to make goals the focus of your day.

I know this, because I've believed it and lived it and written about it, for a long time.

Until recently.

Until recently, I'd always set goals for myself -- short-term and long-term ones, with action lists. I've made progress on each one, and accomplished a lot of goals. And from this traditional viewpoint, I've been successful. So no argument there: goals work, and you can be successful using goals.

But are they the only way?

More recently I've moved away from goals, broken free of the shackles of goals. I've liberated myself because goals are not ideal, in my way of thinking: They are artificial -- you aren't working because you love it, you're working because you've set goals.

They're constraining -- what if you want to work on something not in line with your goals? Shouldn't we have that freedom?

They put pressure on us to achieve, to get certain things done. Pressure is stressful, and not always in a good way.

When we fail (and we always do), it's discouraging.

We're always thinking about the future (goals) instead of the present. I prefer to live in the present.

But most of all, here's the thing with goals: you're never satisfied. Goals are a way of saying, "When I've accomplished this goal (or all these goals), I will be happy then. I'm not happy now, because I haven't achieved my goals." This is never said out loud, but it's what goals really mean. The problem is, when we achieve the goals, we don't achieve happiness. We set new goals, strive for something new.

And while many people will say that striving for something new is a good thing, that we should always be striving, unfortunately it means we're never satisfied. We never find contentment. I think that's unfortunate -- we should learn how to be content now, with what we have. It's what minimalism is all about, really.

And if my philosophy is to be happy now, with enough, with the present, then how are goals consistent with this? It's something I've tried to reconcile over the last few years, with some success.

So if we are content now, and we abandon goals, does that mean we do nothing? Sit around or sleep all day?

Not at all. I certainly don't do that. We should do what makes us happy, follow our pa.s.sions, do things that make us excited. For me and many people, that's creating, building new things, expressing ourselves, making something useful or new or beautiful or inspiring.

So here's what I do, instead of setting and achieving goals: I do what excites me. Each day. I wake up, and work on things that I'm pa.s.sionate about, create things that I love creating.

I don't worry about where I'll be (professionally) in a year or even six months, but where I am right now.

I don't make plans, because they're an illusion -- you never know what will happen in a year or even six months. You can try to control what happens, but you'll lose. Things always come up, sometimes good and sometimes bad, that will disrupt plans. Instead, I've learned to go with the flow, to not worry about things that disrupt plans but worry about what to do right now. This allows me to take advantage of opportunities that come up that I could never have planned for, to work on things I couldn't have known about, to make decisions about what's best right now, not what I planned a few months ago.

I don't force things, but do what comes naturally.

And I focus on the present, on being happy now.

This has taken me time -- letting go of goals is a scary and uncomfortable thing, but if you let them go gradually, it's not that hard. I've slowly adapted the way I work, and learned to work in the moment, and go with the flow of the world that surrounds me (online and off).

It's a beautiful way of working. And not incidentally, I've accomplished even more this way, without making that a goal. It's a natural by-product of doing what you love.