Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on twitter or identica.

In this age of digital communication, we’re busier than ever. And yet, in all of our sound and fury, we seem to have no time for focus, for what’s important, for thinking.

To find this focus, we will need to completely rethink the need for productivity.

Think of our culture’s obsession with productivity: with the need for “hard work” and working long hours to get things done, with the need to be busy busy busy all the time, with the need to make lists and check them off, with the need to juggle countless projects and make more revenue and accomplish more and more. But for what? What’s the point of all this obsession? It leads to burnout, stress, anxiety, unhappiness, greed, confusion, and no time for family, friends, and yourself.

What would happen if we threw all that out the door? What if we said, “I want to get important things done, but the rest can go to hell.”? Let’s create a new creed: Simplicity, purpose, focus, silence, and joy. Let’s make beautiful and useful things, and love doing it.

With this “new” conception of productivity (which is actually as old as work itself), we can adopt some new principles. The principles I propose are inspired by Taoism, a philosophy that has deeply informed my life. I am not a Taoist, nor an expert at it, and many of the things I’ll write below are not exactly in line with it. » Continue your journey »