Slow Productivity
Released on March 5 2024, book by Cal Newport. Go pick up the book today (March 6).
He used John McPhee as example to start it off.
Slow Productivity
A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:
- Do fewer things.
- Work at a natural pace.
- Obsess over quality.
”This philosophy rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride. It also posits that professional effort should unfold at a more varied and humane pace, with hard periods counterbalanced by relaxation at many different timescales, and that a focus on impressive quality, not performative activity, should underpin everything.
”In the second part of this book, I’ll detail the philosophy’s core principles providing both theoretical justification for why they’re right and concrete advice on how to take action on them in your specific professional life, regardless of whether you run your own company or work under the close supervision of a boss.”
Goal: What it means to get things done. Cal Newport wants to prove to us, that accomplishment without burnout not only is possible, but should be the new standard.
Mentioned Ford Motor Company, but industry and agriculture sector’s productivity is very much different from the knowledge sector. In the knowledge sector, decisions about organizing and executing work are largely left up to individuals to figure out on their own. Companies might standardize the software that their employee use, but systems for assigning, managing, organizing, collaborating on and ultimately executing tasks are typically left up to each individual.
The visible-activity heuristic, using visible activity as a crude proxy for actual productivity, became the dominant way we began thinking about productivity in knowledge work.
- It’s why we gather in office buildings using the same 40 hour workweeks.
- That’s also why we gravitate away from deeper efforts toward shallower, more concrete tasks that can be more easily checked off a to-do list. (I’m guilty of that for sure…)
- Long work sessions that don’t immediately produce obvious contrails of effort become a source of anxiety: it’s safer to chime in on email threads and “jump on” calls than to put your head down and create a bold new strategy.
Psuedo-Productivity
The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.
Is a Better Approach Possible?
Part 1: Foundations
The Rise and Fall of Pseudo-Productivity
What Does "Productivity" Mean?
Knowledge work sector lacks useful standard definitions of productivity.