“Doing less is more” concept

Vol 27, Issue 21, 21 March 2025

I am a big fan of yoga and try to do it regularly every morning in order to set an intention for the day ahead. Recently, I have started to notice the phrase they usually say in the most challenging poses, which is – “doing less is more”. I have been wondering a lot about the meaning of this phrase, because I think nowadays we live in the society that is too obsessed with the “successful success”, self-help books, motivation, productivity, and goals. I am sure it is not something new to you either. There are so many influences on the internet who promote the productivity and “the perfect version of yourself”. It has shaped a mindset that doing just one thing in a day, instead of ticking off hundreds of boxes in your daily planner, is laziness.

In fact, there are a lot of cultures where hardworking is considered an absolute must if you want to achieve anything. Ukrainian culture is just the same, and we have a lot of phrases and sayings around it. However, has it ever happened to you that you worked really hard for something, but at the end the result wasn’t that great or at least not what you expected? I think I know the answer. It’s okay, we have all been there, and that’s precisely why I wanted to dig deeper into the concept of doing less and justify it for all of us.

1. Concentrate on one thing

To ensure the highest productivity and focus, I guess it is obvious for all of us that we should keep our attention on doing one thing at a time. For example, I know there are a lot of people who enjoy working and listening to music at the same time. Do not take me wrong, I have nothing against you, but I think that in this way your brain easily gets too overloaded, because it has to process both work and music at the same time. That’s why it would be more reasonable to ensure you are putting fully undivided attention into just one thing.

2. Identify the importance

Make sure that you understand what is important to you and what is not. Do not pick up the activity, which will not likely bring any results to you. After some time it will simply take your energy.

3. Set limits

It is extremely important and useful to set the limits to your working hours and to how many things you do in a day. I know sometimes it feels like we can do more and more, until we are feeling completely drained and burned out. To make sure it doesn’t happen to you, make a schedule of your work or studying time, where you would also indicate the ending time.

4. Quality over quantity

Personally, I think it is the key rule of the “doing less” concept. Instead of doing 10 tasks, do just one but put all of your efforts and passion into it. By doing so, you would strike high results and also show a great performance, while not exhausting your mind and body too much.

To conclude, it takes a lot of courage to implement these rules into your life. It is extremely difficult to cut off some tasks from your work, but from my perspective our modern generation should seek the work-life balance, instead of doing millions of things. It would improve our mental health and productivity, ensuring that there are no burnouts. That’s why “doing less” concept works and helps to maintain a high performance in both personal and professional settings.