We are very goal-oriented in Western culture, and we often count our successes by how much we accomplish.
Eastern cultures can be very goal-oriented as well, but sometimes with a very different approach.
While a westerner sits on his laurels at the end of the day and adds up what he did, an easterner might sit on his laurels and add up what he eliminated having to do. As a simple analogy, you might say that a western artist does sculpture with clay, assembling an entire work piece by piece, while an eastern artist does sculpture in stone, eliminating everything that is not part of the final goal. It is two fundamentally different approaches to a similar point. Yet, there is still more to this analogy than that. The western sculptor may shape clay all day long, but the eastern sculptor sits in front of his stone and meditates on it.