Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

by Cal Newport

We move now from multiyear plans to rethinking how you organize your work for the next few months. At this seasonal scale, you’re typically planning either complete projects, such as launching a new web site, or milestones from larger pursuits, such as completing the first three chapters of a book. Your goals at this scale have a significant impact on the speed of your work. If you’re too ambitious, your intensity will remain pegged at a high level as you scramble to try to hit your targets. If you instead give yourself more than enough time to accomplish your objectives, the pace of your work can fall into a more natural groove. A simple heuristic to achieve this latter state is the following: take whatever timelines you first identify as reasonable for upcoming projects, and then double their length.