- from Tao Te Ching

Be it at the gym, on the running track, on the football field, at work, you can only sprint and stretch yourself for so long before you can no longer take it and are forced to slow down. 

I have seen a lot of people prefer work in this manner where they have periods of time with frenetic activity and other periods of time to rest (or sometimes to slack off). This is an easy way to distinguish between your productive and unproductive periods. Working this way makes it easy to coerce the mind into stretch longer and harder because it always knows there is an end point beyond which it can relax.

But the Tao way is to incorporate anything one wishes to do into their lifestyle. The Tao way is to not stretch only to come back to a default state, but instead to relentlessly push the default state higher. If you do things the Tao way, you do not stretch beyond your means, you increase your means. There are no active and inactive periods. There is a routine, a way of life. There is harmony.

And hence, it lasts forever. 

From the start of this year, I have been following the Tao way (although I only recently realised that I was doing so) and incorporating things I want to do into my lifestyle rather than working towards deadlines and goals. Goals and objectives have only been guides for the path to take, but never have they introduced short-term changes in the lifestyle for the sake of achieving them.