Whenever I encounter advice in this vein, I can't help but feel it significantly undermines the inextricable relationship between productivity/caring and ego.<p>To be able to care just enough about something to genuinely commit to it and yet not care too much to not find yourself entangled with it is incredibly difficult, if not inherently paradoxical.<p><i>Something</i> has to do the caring—that's the ego. We're frequently told to meditate the ego away, but if we do that effectively, an overwhelming equanimity emerges that is essentially a thermodynamic equilibrium and effectively the end of what we generally mean by productivity.