Books · Work & Focus
Book summary and verdict
Slow Productivity
Cal Newport says do fewer things, take your time, and make the work good, which is sensible until you remember your boss owns your afternoon. It works best when the lunatic ruining your schedule is you. Otherwise, enjoy breathing slowly while drowning.
Should you read it?
Read it if you control your schedule and keep turning every ambition into a simultaneous emergency. Skip it if your boss measures responsiveness, because serenity is not a labor policy.
L.Cal Newport would like us to do fewer things, work at a human pace, and get very good at them, a system currently supported by no office I have met. I protected my priorities. Management protected theirs. Works best when the person flooding your week with work is also you.
The ideas
I · Busyness
When nobody can tell whether the work is useful, the office starts rewarding visible concern, so you stare at a spreadsheet like it knows where the bodies are and suddenly you're dependable.
Factories can count chairs. A chair either exists or it doesn’t. Knowledge work is harder. Did Greg have a valuable strategic insight today? Who knows? Nobody knows. But Greg sent fourteen emails before breakfast, so congratulations to Greg. Greg is now senior vice president.
When results are difficult to measure, workplaces reach for visible activity instead: replies, meetings, green dots, status updates, and the general appearance of being hunted. The work becomes secondary to producing evidence that work may be nearby.
L.I answered forty emails. Forty people learned you'll do their thinking.
II · Fewer
Stop trying to accomplish everything simultaneously, like a raccoon trapped inside a kitchen.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
III · Pace
Modern office work demands maximum urgency every day, including the afternoon twelve adults spend choosing between two identical blues.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
IV · Quality
You didn’t become easier to work with. You became expensive to argue with.
The rest of this idea is in the app.
What to actually do
Tonight, write down every commitment currently taking your time, including its meetings, messages, preparation, follow-ups, and paperwork.
Smaller: Leave out vague ambitions unless somebody is already waiting for the result.
L.Count all the hidden work too. That little favor has employees.
Choose the two or three commitments that deserve your best attention. Put everything else on a visible waiting list.
Smaller: Most of those plans were already receiving no attention. Now it’s organized neglect.
L.Fewer active fires. Same amount of building.
When somebody adds a project, show them the current list and ask, “Which priority should move?”
Smaller: Do not say yes and quietly donate your evening.
L.Make them choose the tradeoff. Urgency gets very shy when it has to name the victim.
Pick one commitment whose overhead is larger than its value. Cancel it, pause it, delegate it, or stop volunteering for related work.
Smaller: Just one. People who reinvent their lives on Tuesday usually have to reinvent them again by Friday.
L.Kill a project. Do not buy a notebook.
Give tomorrow’s best uninterrupted block to one meaningful project. Put messages and small chores into one short block later.
Smaller: Turn off alerts and let people wait while you still have a functioning brain.
L.One project gets the adult version of you. Everything else gets what crawls out after lunch.
Still in the app
- What happened when people tried them
- Bullshit?
- Where readers disagree
- The one thing worth remembering
The rest of this book is in the app.
Skip the Book reads the self-help books so you don't have to: what each one argues, what happened when real people tried it, which claims are exaggerated, and what to do tonight. 108 books and counting, new ones most days.
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