How 'Slow Productivity' Changed My Approach to Work

Are you a knowledge worker drowning in tasks, plagued by endless meetings, distractions, and a never-shrinking to-do list? In Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, Cal Newport, known for his groundbreaking concepts like 'Deep Work' and 'Digital Minimalism,' offers practical solutions for anyone feeling overwhelmed by modern work demands.

The need for Slow Productivity

First, what is Slow Productivity? Newport defines Slow Productivity as a philosophy for organising 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.

The philosophy is in response to the struggle to measure the productivity of knowledge workers, resulting in the trap of pseudo-productivity. As Newport outlines, pseudo-productivity is “The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort”, such as constantly checking and sending email or instant messages to visibly signal your busyness with minimal effort. The book challenges the assumption that busyness is a requirement for being productive, inevitably leading to overwhelm, distraction and risk of burnout. 

As Newport makes clear, the book and the actionable tactics are targeted at knowledge workers with a substantial degree of autonomy over their work, such as academics, freelancers, solopreneurs. Even for those of us with bosses and more limited control over our own time, there are things we can do to embrace the principles and take some action to regain control over our time, and produce more valuable work at the same time.

The book is full of insightful examples, and actionable tactics. Below are the three key insights that changed how I think about productivity.

1. Minimise the overhead tax

The biggest takeaway for me was that by doing fewer things at the same time, each project will actually take fewer hours to complete. Each new project you agree to do brings with it not only additional work to complete, but administrative overhead. This cognitive and administrative burden is what Newport calls the 'overhead tax.' This refers to the hidden cost of managing emails, meetings, and coordination across projects, which eats up valuable time and energy. With each new project you take on, the so-called overhead tax aggregates.

This creates a vicious cycle as the more projects you have, the more project overhead you have to do to keep them progressing. The more time you need to dedicate to paying the overhead tax means the more of your day is dedicated to the administrative support of your to-do list and not the actual execution of the tasks themselves. The longer the timeframe for each project also adds further overhead tax as this means more update meetings, emails, and cognitive real estate.

This was such a key insight for me into the challenges of knowledge work. As someone who has managed multiple projects simultaneously with teams of various sizes, levels of hierarchy, and physical locations I have experienced this first hand. I have been in the crazy situation familiar to many knowledge workers where almost all of my day is spent in Zoom meetings, talking about work, while simultaneously messaging or emailing about other projects, and catching up on the actual project work after hours. With this insight, if possible going forward I will focus on fewer projects at a time, with shorter timeframes, and completing these before moving onto the next one.

2. Embrace seasonality

Unlike our ancestors who had natural rhythms in their work year, today’s knowledge workers often face unrelenting cognitive demands all year round. For most office based knowledge work, the intensity and type of work is constant day by day, week by week, year by year. This way of working is a recipe for burnout and disengagement. For knowledge workers, cognitive intensity should vary wildly if you’re going to produce really high-end cognitive work sustainably. Some periods, we need to think really hard; other periods, we need to recharge from the hard thinking.

To support this need for variety of intensity, Newport argues to embrace ‘seasonality’, and suggests several techniques for this. The one that resonated most with me, and is most practical given the reality of my work is to implement ‘small seasonality’. This approach adds some variety into my routine and mixes periods of intense and hectic work with periods of downtime for rest, thinking or working on those interesting and important but not urgent projects.

A practical way to implement ‘small seasonality’ could be a personal policy of no meetings Mondays or Fridays. You don’t need to announce this to your team, just don’t schedule appointments on those days and don’t offer that day as an available meeting time when asked. The reduced distraction from an uncluttered day provides a consistent block of time each week to support progress on the types of hard but important projects that make your work more meaningful.

Another way to embrace ‘small seasonality’ could be to schedule mini-breaks throughout the year, by every 2 to 3 months taking a long weekend to go on a short holiday. This is another way to break up the intensity and monotony of the year by consciously scheduling breaks in. With this insight, going forward I will try to create no meetings Fridays, to have uninterrupted time to catch up on readings and ensure loose ends are tied off for the week, as well as several mini-breaks throughout the year.

3. Identify your most important tasks

We all have lots of different tasks that we do each day and different roles and responsibilities within our job. A key insight from Newport is that in every job, there are two or three really core tasks to being successful. This might seem obvious, but when you are in the day to day busyness of endless requests it can be easy to get caught up and forget what your core priorities actually are. Spend some time working out what the most important tasks actually are for your job. For example, the core tasks that drive success might be client management and strategic planning, while responding to internal emails or attending non-essential meetings might be secondary. Focus your time and attention on these core tasks, while minimising the time spent on the many other tasks that end up being part of your job.

This relates to one of the core ideas of the book to do fewer things. Newport encourages setting fewer, more meaningful long-term goals, rather than being driven by short-term tasks or reactive work. By aligning your efforts with your most important personal or professional goals, this can create more impactful results. With this insight, going forward I will consciously write up the most important tasks of my job and regularly review this list as part of my task management process.

Final thoughts

Newport makes a compelling argument that being busy is not the same as being productive. Thinking more intentionally about what it means to be productive can help avoid the trap of pseudo-productivity. By embracing Slow Productivity, I’ve been able to take back control of my work and focus on what actually matters. If you're constantly busy but never feel productive, maybe it’s time to slow down.