Wu wei (say "woo-way") gets mistranslated as doing nothing, but the old texts say the opposite: the sage does nothing for its own sake, and so there is nothing left undone. It doesn't mean passivity, laziness, or avoiding your problems. Scholars now render it closer to effortless action, or acting without straining against what a moment actually needs. Water still moves the whole river without arguing about it. The skill is knowing how much force a situation actually calls for, and stopping exactly there instead of adding extra push out of anxiety. This morning, find one task you're gripping harder than it requires, a reply, a decision, a conversation you're overpreparing for, and do the smaller, easier version first. Notice how much of your effort was the task, and how much was just strain.
Therefore the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech. All things spring up, and there is not one which declines to show itself; they grow, and there is no claim made for their ownership.
Tao Te Ching, ch. 2 (trans. James Legge)