The Ancient Art of Doing Less (How to Achieve More)

To achieve more, do less.

More Is Less

In a world obsessed with doing more, we’re achieving less.

Don’t believe me?

Forbes says that job burnout is at 66% in the US in 2025. Gallup says 76% of employees experience burnout — “at least sometimes” is the minimum.

That’s close to 70% of employees in a given company.

Burnout negatively impacts sustained productivity, a well-known fact. But before going on any further, we must define productivity before attempting to solve this complex problem.

Productivity is the efficiency of outputs created in relation to the inputs.

Input = Output

or

Time x Effort = (Intended/Unintended) Result

This is why people today, especially young people, are so obsessed with productivity. We want to maximize our outputs, and we think that in order to do so, we need to maximize our inputs.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

We have abundant resources: opportunity, free time, and endless online information ready to be monetized.

Yet, we’re going backwards.

We’re working too hard, for too long, and our quality of output is decreasing.

So, what’s the fix?

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom

Aristotle

The answer is ancient, nearly 2300 years old, and it comes from the writings of Greek philosopher Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics.

Aristotle knew that understanding your own unique nature, you could strategically set yourself up for success. In order to maximize productivity, you need strategic constraint.

We need to start doing less in order to do more.

Here’s why:

The Maximalist Trap vs. The Power of Strategic Constraint

Modern productivity culture is flawed.

We’re told success demands relentless work: longer hours, unwavering focus. Sleep? For the weak. You need to work for 16 hours of the day, every day, for 365.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

What Is “Enough”

Deep work is becoming increasingly valuable at the same time that it’s becoming increasingly rare. Therefore, if you cultivate this skill, you’ll thrive.

Cal Newport

Charles Darwin worked for two 90 minute time-blocks in the morning, then for an hour later on in the day. This was his work for the day — done.

The rise of conversations online discussing deep work and “flow” states (I’d recommend Stealing Fire or Flow), is helping to unearth an ancient solution to this modern problem.

The conscious mind is a potent tool, but it’s slow, and can manage only a small amount of information at once. The subconscious, meanwhile, is far more efficient. It can process more data in much shorter time frames. In ecstasis, the conscious mind takes a break, and the subconscious takes over. As this occurs, a number of performance-enhancing neurochemicals flood the system, including norepinephrine and dopamine. Both of these chemicals amplify focus, muscle reaction times, and pattern recognition.

Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal, Stealing Fire

The ideal amount of intellectual work for the brain is 3–4 hours.

Flow researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow, found that people who work in flow states are 500% more productive than those trying to grind through tasks in a distracted state.

Both deep work and flow go hand-in-hand, and for good reason: high output with minimal input.

Minimum Effective Dose

All you need is the minimum effective dose: your unique Golden Mean.

Aristotle’s Golden Mean: Virtue, moral behaviour, is the mean point between excess and deficiency

The Golden Mean is the sweet spot for sustainability. Not a rigid rule, but a flexible guideline. It adapts to the context.

Here’s what Aristotle’s Golden Mean looks like when applied to our problem:

Deficiency ← Deep Work That’s Sustainable → Excess

Consider the 80/20 principle, applied to our problem.

Imagine if you could get 80% of your standard output. with 20% of the input. Then imagine if you could sustain this across an entire year.

Imagine consistently achieving 80% of your typical weekly output with only 20% of the usual effort?

Let’s say your standard weekly output is completing five blog posts for your newsletter.

With strategic constraint, you’d complete four high-quality posts instead, but without the burnout that often leads to complete inactivity. If a typical burnout cycle knocks you out for one week every month, that’s 12 unproductive weeks per year. By avoiding those slumps and maintaining consistent output, you’d produce approximately 192 high-quality blog posts annually versus a more erratic 175. That’s an increase of nearly 10%, simply by optimising your input and preventing burnout. You’d have done more by doing less.

All it takes is a few days of going 200% with your input, and seeing excellent results, before coming crashing down and giving up for a week and getting nothing done.

Here’s A Personal Story

I’ve always struggled to establish a reading habit. It never mattered how hard I tried. Countless attempts, months of effort. Could I do it? No chance. What was the problem? I told myself, “I just need to try harder and do more!”

Wrong. Completely wrong.

After crashing and failing (the second time around), I realised what my problem was. I was trying to achieve so much, when in reality, I only needed to do 10 minutes of reading this week, to beat my previous week of 0 minutes. I didn’t need to be doing hours upon end. All I needed was my own personal optimal point of sustainability.

10 minutes isn’t a lot. But over the course of a year it adds up compared to last years stats (you don’t even want to know, and yes, I’m suppose to be a writer).

Months have gone by, and by giving myself a target so bloody low, that’s unique to me, but easily achievable for me, my output has increased.

In the last month, I read 4 books, compared to only 9 books in the entire previous year. If I keep going with my sustainable Golden Mean point, that will add up to, with it being May right now, more than 24 books being read starting from next month. That would mean I’d have read 19 more books than last year. That’s an increase of 211% over the calendar year.

All I needed was strategic constraint.

In order to do more with less, and to sustain your output over the longest time possible, you need strategic constraint.

The solution to thriving in our maximalist world is strategic constraint.

You must learn to control your input by understanding your personal limits. This is how you can maximise your output with utmost quality, with the minimum effective dose needed for your input:

5 Actionable Steps to Achieve Strategic Constraint

Here’s how to maximise your work output with Aristotle’s Golden Mean and deliberate strategic constraint.

(1) Identify Your True Capacity

Ask yourself this question:

How much quality work can you actually do before the quality starts to reduce?

Find your limit and back the hell off. If you can do an hour of college work before your mind starts to wonder, you’re only fooling yourself by doing (saying that you’re doing) three.

Work at around 80% of your capacity for now. This will help serve as a temporary reset. But don’t worry. You can, and will, improve on it soon enough. This is just a starting point.

(2) Cut Out What Doesn’t Serve Towards Your Output Goals

You wouldn’t try to open a locked door if you knew it was locked.

So, help yourself.

Set yourself up for success. Remove anything within your vicinity that doesn’t help move you towards your output goal.

You’ve learnt that doing three hours of studying, five times a week, you’re actually only doing about 30 minutes. Excellent. This is your output goal.

Now, what are you doing in the remaining 2 hours and 30 minutes that seems like work, but actually isn’t?

• Sitting at your kitchen table and chatting to everyone who walks in the room

• Staring at YouTube (or this newsletter; if so get rid of it, you should be studying)

• Listening to Spotify when you know that music doesn’t help you increase focus but only helps to dampen other thoughts going on in your head (it doesn’t help you focus, by the way)

• Scrolling through TikTok because you got a notification

Complete an environmental analysis. Observe your inputs. What are you actually doing? What is your environment like?

It’s all an influence.

Move somewhere quiet (if you can, I know it’s hard). Remove your laptop and just look at the books. Don’t listen to music and learn how to properly drop into focus (for now). Throw your phone out of the room and keep it off.

Remember: It’s just for 30 minutes.

(3) Find Your Sustainable Balance Point With Aristotle’s Golden Mean

Maybe your study limit is 30 minutes.

Using Aristotle’s Golden Mean principle, you need to find your optimal point of sustainability.

Ask yourself this question:

• How much could I do daily, every single day without failure, for the next year?

This is your answer.

A year might sound like too long of a metric for this, but that’s exactly the point.

You’re trying to build habits that stick.

If 30 minutes is your intellectual limit, as of right now, do 25 minutes a day for the next week.

So you’ve now gone from

• 3 hours (30 minutes) of studying five times a week = 15 hours (2.5 hours of actual work) of studying weekly

All the way to:

• 25 minutes of studying daily = 175minutes or nearly 3 hours of studying weekly

All in all, you’ve managed to:

1. Gain 12 hours across the week

2. Complete 30 more minutes of studying compared to last week (+20% increase)

This seemingly small increase can translate into finishing an entire book, mastering a new skill, or improving your grades over the course of a semester.

All within the power of properly understanding your own unique personal limits.

(4) Set Boundaries That Enhance Creativity

Find out how you work best. What makes you drop into flow?

Think of STER from Stealing Fire:

• Selflessness (no sense of self)

• Timelessness (hours pass like minutes)

• Effortlessness (your tasks feel effortless)

• Richness (you gain insight in excellent detail)

It could be anything. Coffee, tea, or mochas; working first thing in the morning or late in the evening when everyone is asleep; maybe working with music helps you to drop into a state of flow.

This is all ok. You’ve found your limits, and now it’s all about maximizing the output you can do within those limits.

(5) Measure Advancement Through Sustainability, Not Quantity

The goal is consistency.

You’ve probably heard this time and time again, about how consistency is most important and intensity means nothing without consistency.

Yes. This is all true.

But it misses the point.

There’s no point trying to build a consistent habit if you’re trying to do too much.

What matters is trying to stay below your personal limits consistently. You cannot build a consistent practice if you have not found what even comes to define said practice:

1. Understand your limits

2. State them clearly

3. Back off by about 80%

4. Set a target for each day or week

5. Now focus on keeping consistent

If you find yourself being inconsistent, reduce your personal limits.

Remember, slow progress always beats no progress. Reading 1 page a day for an entire year, with maximum intent of learning and applying knowledge within each day of your life, can lead to you completing one whole book while completely transforming your identity and behaviours. Imagine if Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics became a deep part of who you are as a person?

It’s all about trial and error in the search for, as Socrates would say, living the examined life that is worth living.

Don’t wait until the start of the next week, month, or year to change yourself. The next available opportunity is right now.

I hope that with this letter, I’ve given you some practical wisdom to help you build habits that actually stick. Maybe you have, or will soon, come to learn a little bit more about yourself; I know I definitely did. The notion of strategic constraint is something that we need more of in the grinding-obsessed world of ours.

It really is a profound idea.

Thank you for reading.

- Profound Ideas