Antiquity had a way of condensing wisdom into a few sentences, unlike anything that followed, including this article!
Take a look at this second verse from the Isha Upanishad. I’m designing a whole product around Mindful Productivity, and yet these four lines convey the meaning of it all so effectively…
Always performing actions here,
Īśopaniṣad, verse 2
one may aspire to live a hundred years.
Thus for you there is no other way than this,
whereby action will not cling to you.
If action is the only means of living a life, then life is busyness manifest.
Like our belief in supplements over nutrition, sages condensed wisdom into bite-sized nuggets to make it palatable. Here is one from another culture, more crisp than the Upanishad!
“The day you cease to travel, you’ll have arrived.” – Japanese saying
If action is your vehicle, the destination is always on the move.
Because quantity tends to imply quality, modern philosophers buried their wisdom inside books, making it a game of treasure hunt.
Consider this quote from a philosopher who always kept a resignation letter handy in his drawer when he joined a company!
“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The author continues… “Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”
Still, some wish if wisdom can be reduced to a newsletter.
It cannot. So says an entrepreneur, a modern incarnation of wisdom!
“If [more] information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” – Derek Sivers
That still leaves us with one way to seek cure for busyness. As a pill with no side effects.
That’s possible. And that’s called a skill.
In Mindful Productivity the pill for busyness is a skill called Decision Clarity Window!
Found this helpful?
If this article resonated with you, please share it on LinkedIn to help me spread the word on Mindful Productivity.
Related article:
Nikhil Kabadi 