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In 1959, Jack Kerouac was asked how long it took him to write on the road. “Three weeks,” Jill’s voice answered the house.
This doesn't seem like a clear example of a man taking his time. Yet Kerouac is mentioned in Slow Productivity, the latest book by productivity expert Cal Newport, because his work highlights the reality behind self-myths. Kerouac may have written his first draft in a flurry of activity, but he then spent another six years working on it.
This reframing and refining is key to Newport's argument that knowledge workers—a loose group of creatives and lawyers—need to slow down. His philosophy is based on three principles: doing less; Work at a normal pace. And obsession with quality.
Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has built a following through his Study Hacks blog, his books (including Deep Work and A World Without Email) and podcasts. His ideas are not about the idea of self-improvement and waking up before going to bed, but rather aim to encourage deep focus, away from the noise of social media and performative busyness.
He says his new book comes at a time of “frenzy and untenability,” and proposes a new standard: “accomplishment without exhaustion.” We've been through this before, of course, most notably in Carl Honoré's 2004 In Praise of Slowness. There are proponents of slow cities, the media, and even their operation. Newport cites the slow food movement in Italy in the 1980s, a reaction to fast food coined by activist and journalist Carlo Petrini.
The slow productivity is a response to the cry of pain Newport heard from workers, at the beginning of the pandemic and afterward, who were “losing almost their entire day in successive virtual meetings, with almost every meeting.” The moment of downtime between them is filled with hyperactive Slack chatter.
The pandemic has sparked interest in new working patterns. Despite return-to-office mandates, hybrid work appears to be here to stay. Trials of the four-day week have been conducted globally, where workers receive full pay for 100 percent of production 80 percent of the time.
However, Newport says these ideas seem “inadequate.” He admits that some of his suggestions are reviews of his past greatest hits. He urges people to be realistic about their schedules and trim their to-do list by 25-50 percent. He suggests scheduling slow seasons, such as foraging. “Your boss may notice that you're always ignoring projects, but not 'a month or two at a relatively slower pace,'” he writes. Other adjustments include not meeting on Mondays, scheduling a break, and making time for yourself.
His invitation to take a weekday afternoon off to go to the movies made me worry about slacking off, until he wrote about all the times we tend to work on the weekends, or in the evenings. This confirms his point that sometimes the problem does not come from our bosses, but from ourselves.
Newport case studies are drawn from artists, academics and freelancers. One of the best is Edith Wharton's protected morning writing routine, which involves dropping pages on the floor to be typed later by a secretary. However, I would have liked examples of junior lawyers who resist client requests or of software engineers who wrestle with unrealistic deadlines.
Newport acknowledges, without actually addressing the issue, the difficulty of juggling workloads and caring responsibilities. Ultimately, time is a feminist issue. This was confirmed by Catherine Marsal's 2016 book, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?, which asserted that the economist was able to devote time to his work because he did not have to think about household chores.
It's hard to know how seriously to take Newport's call for slowness, a 41-year-old academic with published books and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. No doubt he would argue that prioritization and focus allowed for his rapid trajectory.
The most interesting part of Slow Productivity is its discussion of pseudo-productivity, which has flourished, he writes, because we are desperate to measure cognitive labor—unlike manufacturing, where it is easy to count how many widgets are made in a given time. Instead of tangible metrics, people use “visual activity as a primary indicator of actual productivity,” Newport says. If you can see me in my office — or . . . see my email responses and chat messages arriving regularly — at the very least, you know I'm doing something.
Newport argues that such performative preoccupation prevents us from doing the work that matters most. He hopes his book will stimulate better ideas about “what we mean by ‘productivity’ in the knowledge sector.” His thoughts on the matter were confusing, and ultimately frustrating. He stressed the effort required to change work patterns. A slow working life may be tempting, but it is not for lazy people.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Achievement Without Burnout By Cal Newport Penguin Business/Portfolio, £16.99/$30, 256 pages
Emma Jacobs writes about work and careers for the Financial Times
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