Tao Te Ching Chapter 63: Thinking About Beginnings

The chapter opens with wu wei as a working method: act through non-action; attend to affairs without interference; taste the tasteless; regard the small as great and the few as many — and, in the line other traditions would spend centuries rediscovering, repay injury with virtue. Then it delivers the most practical time-management teaching in the classic: plan for the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great while it is still small. All difficult things in the world begin as easy ones; all great things begin as small ones.

Hence the sage's secret, stated as pure paradox: he never attempts what is great — and so achieves greatness. Every enormous problem was once a small one someone ignored; every great work is a chain of small ones someone actually did. The closing warns against the casual confidence that skips this: one who promises lightly rarely delivers; one who finds everything easy finds everything hard. The sage treats everything as difficult — and therefore, in the end, encounters no difficulty.