"Never mistake motion for action"

One of my New Year's Resolutions this year was to read a small passage from Ryan Holiday's daily devotional text, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living.  We are almost halfway through the calendar year, and so far, I've been able to keep up with this resolution (some of my others, not so much).  One of the recent devotions came from the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (the passage can be found in Book 4 of his Discourses):

"I can't call a person a hard worker just because I hear they read and write, even if working at it all night.  Until I know what a person is working for, I can't deem them industrious... I can if the end they work for is their own ruling principle, having it be and remain in constant harmony with Nature."

I liked this passage a lot.  As Ryan Holiday writes, "We tend to associate busyness with goodness and believe that spending many hours at work should be rewarded."  I would expand further and suggest that we generally associate "busyness" (i.e. working hard) with being productive - in this case, "working hard" equates with "doing good work."  Unfortunately, this statement is not always true.  Far from it, in fact.  How many times do you find yourself working hard without necessarily making any progress towards things that truly matter?  It's like the proverbial mouse running in circles on a spinning wheel.  

Holiday suggests that rather than just simply "working hard", we should "evaluate what you are doing, why you are doing it, and where accomplishing it will take you.  If you don't have a good answer, then stop."  We should carefully reflect on what we are doing when we are "working hard" - are we truly "hardly working"?  In other words, are we actually getting something useful done?  If the answer to this question is "no", then we should just stop.  

Ernest Hemingway said, "Never mistake motion for action."  Similarly, Tim Ferriss said, "Focus on being productive instead of busy."  And finally, Steve Jobs said, "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it."