Haiku Productivity: The Power of Limits for Increasing Focus

Sometimes we need to be constrained to really get done what we most want to do

An elegant verse. A disciplined life also. Beauty through constraint. Aman Patel1/Shutterstock

A decade ago, I wrote about “Haiku Productivity” and how limits can make us more productive, more focused, and better able to prioritize and simplify.

The idea comes from haiku poetry, in which the poet is limited to three lines and (essentially) 17 syllables. Such a crazy limit, and yet the poetry that can be produced is often very powerful.