Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

by Cal Newport

And yet, in this scenario, I would definitely choose the report option for a simple reason: it will generate many fewer tasks. To organize the conference will require endless coordination with different clients, as well as the need to arrange room rentals and expert speakers, not to mention the hassle of catering, answering logistical questions, and so on. There will be last-minute issues to resolve and countless back-and-forth exchanges—with each obligation demanding its own slice of your mental energy. The client conference, in other words, is a task engine—an efficient generator of numerous urgent small things to do. The market report, on the other hand, represents a different type of energy investment. It will require regular long blocks of time in which you must gather data, process it, and reflect on what it all means. This will be mentally demanding and, at times, perhaps tedious. But it will generate very few urgent small tasks and therefore make few demands on your attention outside of the blocks of time you’ve already set aside to work on it. Writing the report might not be easy, but the decision to choose it over the task engine represented by the messy event organization project should be.