Slow Productivity

Cal Newport's amazing book

Hi All,

quick post today recommending an incredible book I listened to recently: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. I can’t recommend it enough. I listened to the audio book which was a perfect way for me to absorb all of the great research and insight from the author.

To summarize, it’s all about how ‘knowledge workers’ (the many of us with desk jobs) don’t have a clear way to measure their productivity, so we perform busyness by emailing and sending messages, BUT this busyness doesn’t actually produce anything meaningful. Slow Productivity is about slowing down in different ways to create truly meaningful work.

What I enjoyed most were the well-researched examples of real historical figures who, for the author, represent Slow Productivity. Two that really stuck with me:

• Edith Wharton completed her writing from her bed, every morning. She would write, dropping finished pages on the floor, and keep going until lunchtime. That’s how she was productive. What I love most about this example is how it’s so specific to her; she figured out what she needed to do her best work and she arranged her life around it. (Yes, yes, for a rich white lady who had a large house and servants, I know!)

• Benjamin Franklin finding an incredible employee that he eventually named partner to his printing press, enabling Mr. Franklin (don’t feel comfortable calling him Ben…) to more free time to pursue work that mattered deeply to him. He gave up significant financial upside to free himself of the daily burdens of running a printing press. This speaks to something deep for me: freedom and money are many times a tradeoff. Not always, but in my experience, usually. Hopefully I can tell a different story later in my life, but reflecting on my work experiences up to this point, I can say with certainty that the job that paid me the most money was the job where I felt the least freedom.

Here are a few other thoughts that have stuck with me from the book:

• The importance of doing nothing sometimes. The mind needs to rest in order to be productive, so schedule ‘nothing’ time into your life occasionally if at all possible. For me it might be a museum day where I know I will be inspired but I have no real stake in the outcome.

• Question performative busyness. Before reading this book I was aware of how often I checked email and LinkedIn, but after reading this book I see that compulsive checking as a bad habit I want to quit. It is not good for me and does nothing for me other than creating little bits of anxiety.

• Seasonal productivity and slowing down: everyone goes through really busy periods, but try to balance those with restorative periods where you expect less productivity from yourself.

I’ll stop there as I can feel some readers start to prickle at the ideas above and how that may not be possible for them in their day-to-day jobs and lives. I know that I have a lot of comparative freedom to when I had a full time job- but I will also say that the author gives lots of different examples for people with full time jobs to also incorporate more slowness into their work lives.

Anyways- I hope you will read or listen and let me know what you think. The author also has a podcast which is quite good!

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Thanks + until next week,

Cynthia