Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout by Cal Newport
In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport aims to answer a seemingly simple question: How can we sustainably and consistently produce high-quality results?
New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2024
244 pp. $15.99 (Kindle)
It doesn’t take much probing to discover that in the knowledge work environment, when it comes to the basic goal of getting things done, we actually know much less than we’re letting on (12).1 —Cal Newport
In his latest book, Slow Productivity, career development expert Cal Newport aims to answer a seemingly simple question: When it comes to our work, how can we sustainably and consistently produce high-quality results? More specifically: How do we grant ourselves (and our employees) wide leeway to work slowly and deliberately toward a clearly defined, highly valuable result when we’re under pressure to prioritize the number of tasks we’re crossing off our to-do lists?
Many people would agree that the quality of our work is more important than how many things we’re getting done. And yet, the feedback that we get at work often sends a very different message. As Newport puts it, many (if not most) of us find our careers rooted to a large extent in a culture of “pseudo-productivity,” which he defines as “the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort” (21). Many employers attempt to measure and quantify employees’ productivity by the number of reports they file, the number of emails they send, or (bizarrely) by how often or how far the employee’s mouse is moved, in the case of some remote workers. These and similar metrics of pseudo-productivity are well-established and becoming more common, says Newport; he also says that they are largely responsible for an increasingly fatigued, uninterested, and _un_productive workforce, particularly in knowledge work fields. As an antidote to this poison, Newport prescribes a “philosophy of slow productivity,” which encompasses three main principles:
Do fewer things.
Work at a natural pace.
Obsess over quality. (7)
The first fifth of the book explores the problem as Newport sees it, providing case studies and real-life success stories—backed by data—that show burned-out workers, artists, and entrepreneurs reclaiming their health and elevating the quality of their work by ruthlessly cutting all nonessential activities from their workdays. Those who have read Greg McKeown’s excellent and powerful Essentialism will immediately see many ways in which these authors’ ideas dovetail.
Newport shares intimate details about the life of each person in his examples to highlight financial, emotional, and career-related problems that most of us struggle with to some extent, then proceeds to offer evidence-based solutions to those problems. Although it’s helpful to see how Newport’s ideas apply to real people’s lives, his approach is formulaic to the point that it becomes a bit stale by the end of the book.
The book doesn’t really get going until part two, in which Newport does individual deep dives into each of the three principles of slow productivity. These three sections are meaty, and together, they comprise three-quarters of the book. The first section, “Do Fewer Things,” is likely the one that most people will find most difficult to implement. By “do fewer things,” Newport means “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” (53). The section opens with a long story about Jane Austen in which Newport corrects some common misconceptions about her life and work. The generally accepted account, popularized largely by one of her nephews, is that Austen effortlessly wrote several novels while also maintaining a busy schedule as a farm worker and, later, a socialite. The reality, Newport contends, was very different:
. . . a tacit agreement was formed that would free Austen from most of the remaining household labor. She prepared the morning breakfast for the family but, beyond this duty, was free to write. . . .
Hidden from the world at Chawton cottage, suddenly, almost miraculously free of most responsibilities both domestic and social, Austen, for the first time in over a decade, had gained real and meaningful space to think and work creatively. It’s here, working at a modest writing desk by a window overlooking the road, that she finally finishes the manuscripts for Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before moving on to compose Mansfield Park and Emma.
Austen’s nephew may have popularized the story of an overscheduled Austen, prim and proper in her sitting room, working in frenzied bursts between incessant distractions, but the reality of her remarkable years at Chawton is clearly quite different. (50)
Newport does acknowledge that those who work for others may have a difficult time convincing their bosses to change their expectations and metrics. He offers some tips on doing so but concedes that implementing the principles of slow productivity may ultimately require changing jobs or transitioning to self-employment. Even so, he maintains, the financial, emotional, and health-related costs of pseudo-productivity can be so high that anyone who finds himself mired in it should seriously consider a radical change, even if it’s difficult to implement.
Section two, “Work at a Natural Pace,” identifies a principle that is likely less stressful and easier to implement for the average knowledge worker. Newport advises: “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” (115). The main idea in this section is that the human mind works much better and more efficiently when it works slowly and in a relaxed fashion. Newport explains:
Working with unceasing intensity is artificial and unsustainable. In the moment, it might exude a false sense of usefulness, but when continued over time, it estranges us from our fundamental nature, generates misery, and, from a strictly economic perspective, almost certainly holds us back from reaching our full capabilities. A more natural, slower, varied pace to work is the foundation of true productivity in the long term. (123)
Newport uses the example of famous painter Georgia O’Keeffe, whose output throughout her life (in terms of both the number of her paintings and their quality) had a strong inverse correlation to the pace at which she worked. During periods wherein she relentlessly drove herself to work more and faster, she consistently produced fewer finished paintings, and those she did finish tended to be of lower quality. Counterintuitively, she produced her best work (and more of it) when she made a deliberate decision to slow down—to work fewer hours per day and to take more breaks and vacations. The core idea here is as powerful as it is simple: In terms of the quality of one’s work, a focused, unhurried approach is far more effective in the long run than a relentless drive to get more things done more quickly.
Much of section three, “Obsess Over Quality,” has already been heavily implied by the time readers get to it. Newport sums it up: “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 long term” (172). Throughout this section, Newport emphasizes the deep, long-term value of mastering one’s craft, as opposed to the shallow, short-term value of immediate popularity, profit, or recognition.
To illustrate this principle, Newport tells the story of Jewel, a musician who was most popular in the 1990s but continues to make music and tour today. Jewel’s success story was radically different from those of her peers. Whereas most musicians of the time signed with record labels whose strategy was to capitalize on many brief, fleeting spikes of popularity across different audiences or markets, Jewel shunned this approach and chose to build her career according to a school of thought now known as “one thousand superfans.” As a result, she has enjoyed much greater longevity, consistency, and predictability in her career than most of her peers.
In a nutshell, this approach holds that, economically and spiritually, one thousand deeply loyal, heavily invested fans are worth more than one hundred thousand casual fans who will forget about you within a few months or years—and the best way to attract superfans is to do work that is much better than that of most of your peers. Even if your work doesn’t directly depend on fans, followers, or subscribers, the same basic principle applies. In general, you will reap greater rewards in all spheres of life with a smaller catalog or portfolio of exceptionally high-quality work than you will with a vast portfolio of average-quality work.
By the end of Slow Productivity’s first half, readers who are familiar with Newport’s other work will have identified its biggest weakness: It is substantially the same book as Deep Work, which is, in turn, substantially the same book as So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. That isn’t to say that the three books are carbon copies of one another; each does offer valuable insights, strategies, and tactics that aren’t found in the others. On the whole, though, Newport struggles to give each book its own distinct identity, theme, and purpose. If one were to cut all the material that is duplicated or rehashed across the three books, leaving only one instance of each major point, each book would likely be one-third shorter.
Although Slow Productivity is somewhat derivative of Newport’s other work and, at times, a bit repetitive and long-winded, it is nonetheless an exceptionally important book that will be particularly valuable to those not yet familiar with his ideas. Anyone who is serious about creating or maintaining a career that is both sustainable and deeply meaningful should pick up a copy.
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