Slow Productivity Reflection

TLDR

I recently read Cal Newport's "Slow Productivity," which advocates for doing fewer things at once, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality. As someone who often juggles multiple responsibilities and faces burnout, I found the book's principles of slowing down and focusing on what truly matters to be resonant and aligned with my desire for a sustainable balance. Newport's ideas challenge conventional hustle culture and present a more human-centric approach to productivity, emphasizing the importance of reducing obligations, allowing for rest and variability in work, and prioritizing quality over quantity.

Reflecting on my own life, I realize the need to apply these principles to avoid burnout and achieve my goals more effectively. I plan to cut down on my projects, extend deadlines, and invest in tools that improve the quality of my work. For my writing project, I've decided to focus on depth and quality rather than rushing to meet a self-imposed timeline. "Slow Productivity" has inspired me to reevaluate my approach to productivity and adopt a more mindful, quality-focused mindset, and I look forward to implementing these changes and sharing my progress.

Overview

I'm a big fan of Cal Newport's books. Slow Productivity is his newest book, published and released about three days ago. I just finished reading it and taking notes today. Here are my reflections on it and how I plan on adjusting my life after wrapping up the book.

The book discusses our current view of productivity and the term's vagueness in knowledge worker circles. Then, it examines how 'Pseudo-productivity' came into the spotlight. Pseudo-productivity is described as "The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort."[1] This leads to the introduction of a potential alternative to this approach, 'Slow Productivity,' which is defined as "A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner based on the following three principles: 1. Do fewer things. 2. Work at a natural pace. 3. Obsess over quality."[1]

Clouds

Do Fewer Things (At Once)

Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.
~ Cal Newport [1]

The first section recommends reducing the number of things you take on at once to focus your attention on the 1-3 significant things that matter most. Newport mentions a few strategies for implementing this 'do less,' some of which have been repeated in his previous books. I appreciated the specific attention to the 'Pull instead of Push' concept.

My Review:

I'm surprised that the 80/20 rule wasn't mentioned at all, considering not only its relevance but its striking similarity to the main point of this section. In fact, this chapter is about focusing your effort on the 1-3 significant things(20% effort) that produce the most essential output(80% output).

While the ideas in this chapter weren't entirely surprising, they comprise straightforward advice that can make a difference when applied. Buffer time and transition time could have been added to the Overhead Tax discussion. The Overhead Tax is the time and effort it takes to organize the project or task that you currently have. The idea is that the more concurrent projects, the more time spent on Overhead Tax activities, not the actual work itself. We should then focus on fewer things at once to spend a higher percentage of our time on the actual work, not just the work to keep up with the work.

Maximizing the amount of focused time on projects reminds me of setting aside time for transitioning between tasks. Getting to a higher concentration level can take me up to 10 minutes. I account for this as part of my Overhead Tax when scheduling my activities and focus sessions. Setting aside time to get into a task helps protect the focused time where progress is made. Planning for ~15 minutes before your task to get into that state of focus can help ensure you aren't switching from one half-focused session to another for the rest of the day.

Another concept that I find helpful when planning my day and fighting the Overhead Tax is to build Buffer Time. Some of the techniques in the next section provide some buffer time, such as scheduling equal meetings and protected time and scheduling a rest period for every project you take on. I like scheduling buffer time into nearly all my activities and planning because it helps fight my optimistic planning.

For example, I always account for an extra 5 minutes to get into and out of my car when I plan to get anywhere on time. Those 10 minutes of buffer time account for setting up my music, directions, and most of the traffic that I could reasonably face.

Work At A Natural Pace

Don't rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.
~ Cal Newport [1]

This section discusses working at a rhythm that embraces volatility in effort over time. The techniques are geared towards letting projects take their time, allowing and planning for variability in effort over the scale of the year, month, or week, and making the context of work more human.

My Review:

This section contained the most novel information in the entire book. I'm very used to books about techniques for maintaining a period of intensity on a project, but rarely do I see such information on balancing this intensity with rest. I appreciated the number of approaches to balancing periods of intense focus with rest periods.

While some advice is well-worn, such as the common 'doubling an estimate for a deadline,' it is well-placed for this section.

Obsess Over Quality

Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the longterm.
~ Cal Newport [1]

The main idea of this section is that Slow Productivity allows you to focus on producing higher-quality work. You can leverage this higher-quality work to gain more freedom. However, it would be best to avoid obsessing over quality to the extent that you work at an unnatural pace or take on too many things.

My Review:

This is a minor grievance, but some of the advice was duplicative. In the 'Do Less' section, one technique offered is to spend money on tools that save overhead costs, and in this section, one approach is to spend money on higher-quality tools and equipment. These pieces of advice overlap. I can understand framing them from different perspectives because they have other impacts.

Something about the last few techniques and how the book was wrapped up felt like it was missing something.

Clouds

My Reflections and Going Forward

How does my current life and workload contradict the advice in the book?

I am taking 18 credits over 7 concurrent classes and working 10-15 hours each month. I'm also working on my second book and spending time with my girlfriend. I double up on activities where I can. I've been doing this for over 8 years but have often burned out. I'm 22 now and have set aside time to slow down. While still taking full loads, I can appreciate the message of slowing down even further. This book provides efficient ways to continue slowing down.

What am I going to change going forward?

Early in the book, Newport discusses limiting the number of more significant missions, projects, and daily activities to slow down. Later in the book, he mentions giving yourself more time to reach your goals and finish your projects.

I had stopped spending 1 hour a day writing my book to finish reading this book. I spent the past 4 days reading and reflecting on how to apply the advice to this writing project and others. Here is an assessment of the things I have going on concurrently:

Missions:

~ An goal or direct for an area of your life.

Projects:

~ Larger tasks that must be completed over multiple sessions of work.

After reviewing my current list of missions and goals, I feel good. My main focus right now is to finish my classes so I can graduate on schedule, which aligns with the book's principles. I've done a decent job of limiting my main focus and projects. However, I can further cut down my projects to exclude website writing projects and my resume until the time to work on them is crucial.

The principles I struggle most with are: "Work At A Natural Pace" and "Obsess Over Quality."

In some ways, I can maintain a natural high-intensity rhythm when inspiration and availability are high and then rest periods. However, I try to fit too much into a single day or period of work.

Investing In Tools and Quality

To improve the quality of my work, I've decided to start investing in tools and software. I bought a subscription to Grammarly to test it out with my writing process. I've wanted to get a text editor that could help me improve the quality of my writing and challenge me to spend more time editing and iterating on my written work.

Investing in tools to help my writing process also makes me want to spend more time improving the quality of my work. I've spent at least 2 hours editing this review, mainly as a way to play with the tool and the suggestions that it has made. I cut my writing for it nearly in half by taking this time to clear up what I wanted to say.

Slowing Down My Writing Project

I started reading this book to challenge my assumptions about the pace I had been working at and see if it had any suggestions for improving my project process. The most striking idea was to slow down the pace of your projects once you had your projects whittled down to the essential few.

My original plan for writing my second book was to give myself the next six months to finish it. This deadline was to help me stay focused and keep it as my primary project focus for the next few months. If I had written for at least a focused hour a day, I figured I could have a roughly 50,000-word book through three drafts and publish it.

For the first week or two, I was on track to meet this goal until I realized that my chapter outline for the first section was expanding from my predicted 7,000-word limit to potentially 40,000 words. I had written nearly 1500 words a day and had only finished 3 of the 10 parts that I had planned. This meant that I had much more to say about the section than I had first thought, which meant spending more time on the book.

I stopped writing on the book to gain insights and restructure my approach. While I still believe that writing for 1 hour a day will get me to a finished book, I think that I am going to have to expand my deadline and allow myself to A) Take my time writing the book in its entirety and B) dive deep into the quality of the writing.

Instead of rushing to publish a book that would have skipped over so many things that I would have liked to say, I'm going to allow myself to take the time to really talk about the parts of the learning process to create a complete image and framework.

To adjust my goal with the information I have learned from Slow Productivity, I will update the pace of my goal so that I can spend more time focusing on the quality and depth of my writing and research. Instead of trying to rush into a 6-month deadline, I will give myself 18 months to write the 50 chapters I have planned.

This means I will get around 100 days to work on each of the 5 sections I have planned and roughly a month or two to finish editing and publishing. I will also change my writing goal so that I can both A) put in effort every day and B) have time away to rest and recharge. I set a minimum goal to write for 10 minutes or 1 complete thought, whichever comes first. At my most recent pace of 20 wpm, I can get around 200 words in 10 minutes of writing. 10 minutes is also short enough for me to get into the zone, so I can continue to write more if I have the time and space. Yet, 10 minutes is not enough time to commit to such a project if I do not wish to.

The concept of slowing down one's project pace has helped me re-evaluate my writing process. Instead of rushing toward a deadline, I now plan to take my time and focus on the quality and depth of my writing. By giving myself 18 months to write the 50 chapters I have designed and setting a minimum goal to write for 10 minutes a day, I can achieve my writing goals while allowing myself time to rest and recharge. This approach will enable me to create a complete and thoughtful framework for my book.

I look forward to sharing my progress in the coming months.


Before You Buy:

If you are considering getting the book for yourself, I recommend you read through these reviws: The Very Busy Writer Telling Everyone to Slow Down by Jennifer Szalai, and Slow Productivity by Cal Newport — when less means more by Emma Jacobs. There is a good mix of fair critisim that I didn't appreciate until I had finished reading the book, but I personally enjoyed putting my head down the past few days and taking notes.

Footnotes:

  1. C. Newport, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. New York, NY, USA: Portfolio, 2024.