How a paradoxical strategy can help you be more productive.

Have you ever considered not to plan for a week?

Have you heard of the Taoist concept of Wu Wei?
It is the art of non-action or simply not forcing.
The idea is to embrace flow instead of effort to achieve a result.

To western ears, this might sound a little paradoxical.
We need to set goals and pursue them with determination to finally succeed, right?

At least, this was what I thought.
I have always liked planning and structure.
A nice frame that allows me to be creative without losing sight of to-dos and deadlines. A list of weekly key results to tick off every Friday.

Over the last year, I have tried out various time management tools and productivity apps to be more productive.
The original idea was to create a habit to maximize efficiency.

As nicely as it worked out at the beginning, after some time, my endeavour started to backfire. I felt more and more exhausted, my creativity seemed to have left me and I found it increasingly hard to focus.
I spent more and more time at my desk.
I became less connected with my environment.

The number of items I could tick off my list of tasks was also not growing — quite on the contrary. And worst of all, I was getting impatient with myself and frustrated that I couldn’t reach my goals faster.
So what was the logical thing for me to do?

You guessed correctly.

I tried out new time management tools.
I planned in more working hours and tried to work harder to reach my goals.

I currently take part in a Fierce Trainer Certification Course.
Fierce is a facilitator assisted program that is dedicated to helping clients lead more impactful conversations.

In our last training session, we were facilitating a so-called beachball meeting. A beachball meeting is similar to a think tank.
It is a creative troubleshooting session that can help you get a fresh perspective on things, find alternative solutions or gain a deeper understanding of a problem. A volunteer was needed, and so I came forward and presented my dilemma to the group.
‚And what if you stopped planning altogether for a week?‘, a member of the group asked.

I was shellshocked.
One week without planning — impossible.
This would throw me back … ages.

Over the weekend, other suggestions the group had made started to seep in gradually. By Sunday, it finally dawned on me.
Desperately repeating strategies that obviously do not work will not get me closer to my goals.

So this week, I decided to do it all differently.
I decided to ignore my elaborate planning systems — to throw them all out of the window.

And this is what happened after I finally managed to overcome light symptoms of cold turkey at the beginning of the week:

I decided to go for a coffee with my husband instead of reviewing last week’s goal setting sheet.

I just sat out on the balcony to watch the birds and the trees in the evening instead of sitting on the computer to get things for work finished before bedtime.

And this afternoon, I joined a yoga in the park event as a participant — just for the fun of it — a nice change to guiding yoga classes myself.

And guess what?
It felt great.

And despite all of the things I did not do, I managed to prepare and teach some great training sessions, got a newsletter finished and read two chapters of a book that had been in my handbag for ages.

I noticed that summer has arrived in the city and that the grass smells incredible.

And I noticed something else.
My creative juices have started flowing again and I have my focus back.

So there definitely is something to the notion of WU WEI — the art of effortless action.
We just need to allow it to happen.

Isabella Keilani is a communication skills trainer and a language coach for English and German.

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