Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

by Cal Newport

As previously argued, for most of recorded human history, the working lives of the vast majority of people on earth were intertwined with agriculture, a (literally) seasonal activity. To work without change or rest all year would have seemed unusual to most of our ancestors. Seasonality was deeply integrated into the human experience. This proposition argues that things don’t have to be this way. Seasonality might be impossible in settings such as industrial manufacturing, but knowledge work is significantly more flexible. For those who work in cubicles instead of factories, there are more opportunities than you might at first imagine to vary your relationship with your work throughout the year. The key is to recognize that you don’t need access to thirty-six acres of rural lakefront property to cultivate a beneficial seasonality.