Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
The Book in Three Sentences
Computers and networks opened many new possibilities, but when combined with pseudo-productivity they ended up supercharging our sense of overload and distraction, pushing us onto a collision course with the burnout crisis that afflicts us today.
The relentless overload that’s wearing us down is generated by a belief that “good” work requires increasing busyness—faster responses to email and chats, more meetings, more tasks, more hours.
The philosophy of Slow Productivity rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride. To embrace slow productivity, in other words, is to reorient your work to be a source of meaning instead of overwhelm, while still maintaining the ability to produce valuable output.
Slow Productivity Summary
This is my book summary of Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. My notes contain best quotes from the book and the key lessons in my view.
Table of Contents
#1: Do Fewer Things.
In knowledge work, when you agree to a new commitment, be it a minor task or a large project, it brings with it a certain amount of ongoing administrative overhead: back-and-forth email threads needed to gather information, for example, or meetings scheduled to synchronize with your collaborators. This overhead tax activates as soon as you take on a new responsibility.
As your workload increases, however, the overhead tax you’re paying will eventually pass a tipping point, beyond which logistical efforts will devour so much of your schedule that you cannot complete old tasks.
It is the acceptance of this fundamentally uncontrolled nature of knowledge work that provides a solution to our mystery: self-regulation.
Overload is not fundamental to knowledge work. It’s instead largely a side effect of the crude ways in which we self-manage our work volume.
Doing fewer things is the key to producing good work.
Proposition: Limit the Big
Limit Missions
The term mission can sound grandiose. For our purposes, we’ll demote it to a more pragmatic definition: any ongoing goal or service that directs your professional life.
Any attempt to succeed with our first principle of slow productivity, therefore, must begin with the reduction of your main objectives/mission.
Limit Projects
When considering a new project, you estimate how much time it will require and then go find that time and schedule it on your calendar. Block off the hours as you would for a meeting.
If you’re unable to find enough blank spaces in your schedule in the near future to easily fit the work, then you don’t have enough time for it.
Limit Daily Goals
Work on at most one project per day. To clarify, I don’t intend for this single daily project to be your only work for the day. You’ll likely also have meetings to attend, emails to answer, and administrative nonsense to subdue (we’ll talk more about these smaller tasks in the upcoming proposition about containing the small).
But when it comes to expending efforts on important, bigger initiatives, stay focused on just one target per day.
Proposition: Contain the Small
In many cases, it’s not the actual execution of a small commitment that generates distraction, it’s instead the cognitive effort required to remember it, to worry about it, and to eventually find time for it in your schedule.
Put Tasks on Autopilot
Create an autopilot schedule. In school, the idea was to assign regularly occurring classwork to specific times on specific days, and sometimes even specific locations, each week.
You can set times for accomplishing specific categories of regularly occurring tasks.
A key refinement to support this task-centric version of autopilot scheduling is to leverage rituals and locations. If you can connect a regularly recurring task block to a specific location, perhaps paired with a little ritual that helps initiate your efforts, you’re more likely to fall into a regular rhythm of accomplishing this work.
Synchronize
If much of your perceived busyness comes from talking about tasks instead of actually executing them, you might be less overloaded that you realize. If you can reduce the footprint of these conversations, the pile of actual, concrete obligations that remains might not be so forbidding.
A direct strategy for reducing collaboration overhead is to replace asynchronous communication with real-time conversations.
Set docket clearing meetings. Like office hours, these meetings happen at the same times on the same days, each week. During these sessions, your team churns through any pending tasks that require collaboration or clarification. The group moves through one task at a time, figuring out for each what exactly needs to be done, who is working on it, and what information they need from others.
An easy way to manage these sessions is to maintain a shared document of tasks to discuss. Team members can add items to the list as they come up in between meetings.
When you separate work from the ad hoc conversations that surround it, what you’re left with might not be all that intimidating.
Make other people work more
Create a reverse task list. It works as follows: Create a public task list for each of the major categories of tasks you tackle in your job. You could use a shared document for each purpose. (If you’re feeling more advanced, a shared Trello board is perhaps even better.)
When someone asks you to take on some small obligation, direct them to add it themselves to the relevant shared task list. Critically, make it clear that all of the information you’ll need to complete the task should be included in their entry.
You can also use these public lists to keep people updated on the status of tasks you’re currently handling, saving them from having to bother you with, “How’s it going?” messages.
Avoid Task Engines
When selecting new projects, assess your options by the number of weekly requests, questions, or small chores you expect the project to generate. Prioritize options that minimize this number.
Spend Money
Invest in professional software services that eliminate or simplify administrative work, thus reducing your task list.
The more you can tame the small commitments pulling at your attention, the more sustainably and effectively you can work on things that matter.
There are other options beyond software services for trading your money for reduced task lists. You could employ virtual assistants instead.
Proposition: Pull Instead of Push
Pull workflows are a powerful tool to avoid overload in the knowledge work setting.
Simulated Pull, Part 1: Holding Tanks and Active Lists
The first step in simulating a pull-based workflow is tracking all projects to which you’re currently committed to on a list divided into two sections: “holding tank” and “active”.
Remember that a project is something substantial enough to require multiple sessions to complete. Smaller commitments are tasks.
When a new project is pushed toward you, place it in the holding tank section of your list. The active position of your list should be limited to three projects at most. Focus your time on projects on the active list. When you complete a project, remove it from your list and pull in a new project from the holding tank.
Simulated Pull, Part 2: Intake Procedure
When adding a new project to your holding tank, send an acknowledgement message to the source of the new obligation, but also include the following three pieces of extra information:
A request for any additional details you need from the source before you can start the project,
a count of the number of existing projects existing on your list, and
an estimate of when you expect to complete this new work.
If you fall behind on a project, update your estimate and inform the person who originally sent you the work about the delay.
Be clear on what’s going on, and deliver on your promises, even if these promises have to change. Never let a project just drop through the cracks and hope it will be forgotten.
Simulated Pull, Part 3: List Cleaning
You should update and clean your lists once a week.
In addition to pulling in new work to fill empty slots on your active list, you should also review upcoming deadlines. Prioritize what’s due soon, and send updates for any work you know you’re not going to finish by the time promised.
Finally, when cleaning your lists, look for projects that have become redundant or have been rendered obsolete by subsequent developments. But before you do so, send a quick note to their original source letting them know.
#2: Work at a Natural Pace
The great scientists of past eras would have found our urgency to be self-defeating and frantic.
They were interested in what they produced over the course of their lifetimes, not in any particular short-term stretch.
We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness.
Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performative rewards of unwavering urgency. There will always be more work to do. You should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.
In the knowledge work era, the managerial class didn’t know how to handle the autonomy and variety of jobs. Their stop gap response was pseudo-productivity, which used visible activity as a proxy for usefulness.
A more natural, slower, varied pace to work is the foundation of true productivity in the long term.
Proposition: Take Longer
The pseudo-productivity mindset is uncomfortable with spreading out work on an important project, as time not spent hammering on your most important goals seems like time wasted.
Make a five year plan
Most people restrict their long term planning to cover something like the next few months. What you would like to accomplish in the next five years or so?
The idea that adding more plans to your life can help you slow down might seem paradoxical. The magic here is in the way this strategy expands the timescales at which you are evaluating your productivity.
Double Your Project Timelines
Take whatever timelines you first identify as reasonable for upcoming projects, and then double their length.
A reality of personal productivity is that humans are not great at estimating the time required for cognitive endeavors.
A key tenet of slow productivity is that grand achievement is built on the steady accumulation of modest results over time. This path is long. Pace yourself.
Simplify your Workday
One of the central joys of slowing down your work pace is that it frees you from needing to attack every day with frantic intensity. To reap this benefit, however, you actually have to simplify your daily schedule.
When it comes to taming appointments, a good target is to ensure that no more than half of the hours in any single day are dedicated to meetings or calls.
As a given day starts to fill up with appointments, it also fills up with protected blocks, making it increasingly harder to add something new.
Forgive Yourself
Sometimes you might let something drag on too long; you miss deadlines or opportunities; you realize you’ve fallen behind your vision.
It’s tempting to react to these periods of depressed productivity by assinging yourself a penance of crushing busyness. I want to push back on this reaction: Forgive yourself.
The key to meaningful work is in the decision to keep returning to the efforts you find important. Not in getting everything right every time.
Proposition: Embrace Seasonality
Schedule Slow Seasons
Decide to have a slow period for a single season each year: maybe in July or August, late November to New Year.
For this idea to work, you should, if possible, arrange for major projects to wrap up before your simulated offseason begins, and wait to initiate major new projects after it ends.
Define a Shorter Work Year
Some professionals who own their business often decide to work for only ten months in a year. This would mean lower income for the months but is worth the efforts.
Implement “Small Seasonality”
Seasonality doesn’t refer to only slowing work for entire seasons. Varying your intensity at smaller timescales can also prove useful in achieving a more natural pace.
The general goal for this proposition is to help you avoid working at a constant state of anxious high energy, with little change, throughout the year.
Here are four suggestions for implementing this philosophy:
No meeting Mondays. Don’t schedule appointments on Mondays. You don’t need to make a public announcement about this decision. This will help you have a gradual transition from the weekend to back to the week. Other days could work as well.
Watch a Movie Once a Month. Try to put aside an afternoon to escape to the movies once per month, protecting the time on your calendar well in advance so it doesn’t get snagged by a last-minute appointment.
Schedule Rest Projects. Pair each major work project with a corresponding rest project. After putting aside some time on your calendar for a major work project, schedule in the days or weeks immediately following it time to pursue something leisurely and unrelated to your project.
Work in Cycles. Basecamp has a policy of organizing work in cycles. Each cycle lasts from six to eight weeks where teams focus on clear and urgent goals. Crucially, each cycle is followed by a two-week “cooldown” period where teams can recharge while fixing small issues and deciding what to tackle next.
Proposition: Work Poetically
Strange workplaces are powerful, even when they’re ugly. When seeking out where you work, be wary of the overly familiar.
My advice here has two parts. First, form your own personalized rituals around the work you find most important. Second, in doing so, ensure your rituals are sufficiently striking to effectively shift your mental state into something more supportive of your goals. The second principle of productivity asks that you work at a more natural pace.
#3: Obsess Over Quality
Quality demands that you slow down. Once achieved, it also helps you take control of your professional efforts, providing you the leverage needed to steer even further away from busyness.
This principle is the glue that holds the practice of slow productivity together. Doing fewer things and working at a natural pace are absolutely necessary components of this philosophy, but if implemented without an obsession over quality, they might serve only to fray your relationship to work over time - casting your professional efforts as an imposition you must tame.
Once you commit to doing something really well, busyness becomes intolerable.
A commitment to quality work means that you’ll do fewer things.
The marketplace doesn’t care about your personal interest in slowing down. If you want more control over your schedule, you need something to offer in return.
Proposition: Improve Your Taste
When you gather with other people who share similar professional ambitions, the collective taste of the group can be superior to that of any individual.
Quality matters, but if it becomes everything, you may never finish.
Give yourself enough time to produce something great, but not unlimited time.
Focus on creating something good enough to catch the attention of those whose taste you care about, but relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece. Progress is what matters. Not perfection.
Proposition: Bet on Yourself
One of the most approachable strategies for betting on yourself is temporarily dedicating significant amounts of time to an important project.
Committing your free time to a project is an easy way to bet on yourself.
Don’t haphazardly quit your job to pursue a more meaningful project.
Wait instead to make a major change until you have concrete evidence that your new interest satisfies the following two properties: first, people are willing to give you money for it, and second, you can replicate the result.
Leverage your social capital. If you announce your work in advance to people you know, you’ll have created expectations. If you fail to produce something notable, you’ll pay a social cost in terms of embarrassment. This can act as a powerful motivator to your work.
Conclusion
The book’s purpose is to help as many people as possible free themselves from the dehumanizing grip of pseudo-productivity.
However, the Slow Productivity philosophy is meant primarily for those who engage in skilled labor with significant amounts of autonomy.
This target audience covers large swaths of the knowledge sector, including most freelancers, solopreneurs, and small-business owners, as well as those in fields like academia, where great freedom is afforded in how you choose and organize your efforts.
If you fall in one of these categories and are exhausted by the chronic overload and fast pacing of pseudo-productivity, then I urge you to consider radically transforming your professional life along the three principles proposed. Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.
Depending on the details of your role, this probably won’t mean spending weeks staring up at tree branches or typing notes on a typewriter, but it will almost certainly lead to a more sustainable relationship with your job.