Want to emrace a slower lifestyle? Personally, I have been slowing down over the past years and there is a lot to say about doing things more slowly, more delibaretely. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport is a book written for people who are knowledge workers. A book for me, then, perhaps, as someone who has been working with data for fifteen years and who’s been an office worker for almost his entire career.

If you’re not a knowledge worker, this book is not for you

Quick disclaimer on the outset. Cal Newport wrote this book for people who are knowledge workers and if you are someone who’s juggling his calendar, appointments and doing actual work, then this book is for you. If you’re not spending any time in an office, then you can easily skip this one.

Pseudo-productivity

Productivity is a big thing in this day and age. We just can’t seem to get enough of it. Everything has to be maxed out, we need to perform and churn out large quantities of products and goods. And while this stuff is easily measured if there’s a physical product at the end of the line, it’s very blurry when it comes to knowledge work. Am I productive if I manage to produce 10 reports a month? The biggest problem is that whatever it is you produce as a knowledge worker, differs from one to the next worker. But still in the office we try to apply the same principles that we’ve been using for factories and farms. The problem is that these don’t work.

Ever since we started working with computers, the amount of pseudo-productivity has risen with each passing year. We’ve become overwhelmed with ways to stay in contact with our co-workers and this has led to a flooding of our calenders with pointless meetings, reacting to endless strings of e-mails and attending meetings that could have been e-mails. All in an attempt to make ourselves seem very busy, when in fact we are left with less time to do the actual work we were hired to do. Cal Newport has a couple of ideas on how to fix that and he uses three different principles how to weather the storm and become more focussed, by applying them to embrace a slower type of working.

Three Principles of Slow Productivity

Principle #1: Do fewer things

Office work comes with a lot of obligations and the point of this principle is to start saying “No” more often to things that don’t necessarily involve your actual work. Attend less meetings, don’t check your e-mail multiple times every hour. Overall just try to reduce your workload, especially if it can be categorized as pseudo-productivity.

The main thing about this principle is that you should have time to spare to get work done. Real work, that is.

Principle #2: Work at a natural pace

So often we get caught up in work and deadlines and I think a lot of people will agree that deadlines are just the worst. Especially when it comes to producing good work, you don’t want to have that feeling that you’re constantly rushing to produce stuff. The second principle is all about embracing a more laid back and slower way of working. One that fits more with what you’re supposed to do.

There are several benefits for working at a natural pace. First of all, you’re less likely to make mistakes, because you work more elaborately. Second, the quality of the work overall will be much higher, because you take the time to make it. Of course, this doesn’t mean that sometimes you will still have a very intense bout of work, but it’s all in the way you plan and package it, that makes all the difference. For instance, I know that the first two weeks of every month at my current job are busier than the latter two. That’s because I have to produce several analyses and reports and a lot of other updates all take place on the first monday of the month. The latter weeks I can spend a bit more leisurely, helping out colleagues with other report requests and the daily “grind”.

When it comes to writing, I also try to work when I can on ideas and try to plot chapters, by jotting down a couple of bullet points on what should take place during that chapter. And I also have a list of blog ideas that I keep adding new stuff to, so I can blog about it at a later time, when inspiration strikes.

Principle #3: Obsess over quality

My personal motto is always ”Quality over Quantity”, which might sound weird for someone whose novels are 400+ pages long. But they could have been even longer if I didn’t scratch a lot of stuff from the manuscripts. Still, I always take the time to produce something that I’d want to read myself and quality is big part of that as well.

Sometimes we feel that we need to keep producing, so we won’t miss any opportunities. And also it’s probably not a bad idea to keep tinkering on your work, so you know it’s the absolute best you can possibly produce. I’d rather have 10 good books on my name, than 100 mediocre ones. That’s why I also love video game studios who simply work on their games for years, to make sure it’s done well in one time, rather than just dumping their game on the market and then patching everything later. Imagine if writers did that too? Just dump version 1 of your book on the market and then release a “patch” later. How idiotic would that look?

Quality should be something to always consider. I think good quality also brings something genuine with it that can’t be achieved by rushing things.

Conclusion

Cal Newport’s book on Slow Productivity is a bit of a niche book, because it’s solely aimed at knowledge workers. While there is some appliance for this in all of life, perhaps, this does mean the book can’t be recommended to people outside of this group. At least not, when you ask me.

This book has mostly confirmed a few things for me post-burn-out. We need to look at knowledge work differently and our approach to what productivity is and even more importantly what it is not, should be more clear. In my recent years I’ve become a master in autonomy at work and guarding my calender from filling up with pointless meetings. And when I schedule meetings myself, I try to stick what’s important, add in some pleasantries, but always stay well within the limits of the time. When I plan a meeting for 30 minutes, it can be done in 15. When I do so for an hour, we probably only need half the time. The results is that everyone is happy about how efficient the meetings go.

If anything, I would recommend everyone to try to take on a slower productivity style with their work. Especially during the time of AI and all the tech developments that make our life insanely faster than what we have managed to get used to. Our brains just don’t work well with extreme deadlines and all the stress that comes from technology these days.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐