Wu wei
Etymology
Chinese 無為, from "wu" (not, without) and "wei" (doing, action), a cornerstone of Daoist philosophy in the Laozi and Zhuangzi. It does not mean literal inaction but action free of strain, ego, and resistance to the grain of things.
noun · /woo WAY/
Effortless action — acting in such natural alignment with a situation that things get done without force or struggle.
What it names
It gives a name to the paradox of “doing by not-doing,” a mode of skilled, unforced flow that Western vocabulary tends to mistake for mere passivity.
Example
The best editors practice a kind of wu wei, shaping a sentence so lightly you never feel their hand.
Related idea
It overlaps with the psychologist’s flow, but wu wei is an ethical and cosmological stance about harmonizing with the world, not just a description of absorbed concentration.