Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

by Cal Newport

hoc conversations that surround it, what you’re left with might not be ...

MAKE OTHER PEOPLE WORK MORE

In general, strategies that require people to do more work can prove effective for containing tasks. Consider, for example, a more palatable version of my New Yorker suggestion that I call the reverse task list. It works as follows: Create a public task list for each of the major categories of tasks you tackle in your job. You can use a shared document for this purpose. (If you’re feeling more advanced, a shared Trello board is perhaps even better.) When someone asks you to take on some small obligation, direct them to add it themselves to the relevant shared task list; writing it, for example, into the shared doc, or creating a new card for it on the shared Trello board. Critically, make it clear that all of the information you’ll need to complete the task should be included in their entry. Reverse task lists require people to spend more time specifying exactly what they need

from you, which simplifies the later execution of their requests. You can also use these public lists to keep people updated on the status of the tasks you’re currently handling, saving them from having to bother you with “How’s it going?” messages. Finally, these lists clearly communicate your current workload. If a colleague encounters an overstuffed reverse task list, they might think twice about giving you something new to do. Another strategy along these lines is to introduce processes that require your colleagues or clients to do more of the work associated with a given task.

At first, these strategies for making the burden of task assignments more symmetric can feel self-indulgent. You might even worry that others will be offended by your brashness. In reality, however, if you’re diplomatic in your phrasing, and deploy sufficient self-deprecation, you can introduce these systems without attracting too much ire. Indeed, your peers might end up appreciating the added structure, as it provides clarity about how or when their requested work will actually be accomplished. In general, people are often too focused on their own problems to care about how you’re solving your own.

AVOID TASK ENGINES

When selecting new projects, assess your options by the number of weekly requests, questions, or small chores you expect the project to generate. Prioritize options that minimize this number. Most people focus on the difficulty of a project, or the total amount of time it might require. But once you understand the havoc wreaked by an overstuffed to-do list, it makes sense that the task footprint of a project should be taken just as seriously.

SPEND MONEY

From the context of slow productivity, investments of this type make a lot of sense. The more you can tame the small commitments pulling at your attention, the more sustainably and effectively you can work on things that matter.

Hiring professional service providers is another effective investment for keeping your task lists contained.

But in the long term, this off-loading of the small can provide the mental space needed to make the types of large breakthroughs, and produce the type of value, that will make these monthly expenses suddenly seem trivial in scope. Don’t spend more than you can afford. But recognize that a practitioner of slow productivity cannot afford to spend nothing.

The first principle of slow productivity provides what is ostensibly professional advice. Working on fewer things can paradoxically produce more value in the long term: overload generates an untenable quantity of nonproductive overhead.

To be overloaded is not just inefficient; it can be, for many, downright inhumane.

This first principle of slow productivity is not just about a more effective way to organize work, it also provides a response for those who feel like their work is corroding away all the other attributes of their existence.

Haphazard, push-based workflows might seem unavoidable for the many who are stuck in such settings, but they don’t have to be. It’s possible to reap a substantial fraction of the advantages of a more enlightened pull approach even when you lack full control over your work environment. The key is to simulate a pull-based assignment system in such a way that the people you work with don’t even realize you’re trying something new. What follows is a three-step strategy for implementing a simulated pull system as an individual without control over the habits of your colleagues or clients. Such an individualized system, of course, is not as effective as having everyone on the same page about abandoning pushes, but it’s still much better than the default response of throwing up your hands and letting work be flung toward you from all directions, sighing in frustration as your metaphorical tray of samples begins to overflow. SIMULATED PULL, PART 1: HOLDING TANK AND ACTIVE LISTS The first step in simulating a pull-based workflow is tracking all projects to which you’re currently committed on a list divided into two sections: “holding tank” and “active.” (The format used for storing this list doesn’t really matter. You can use a text file on your computer, for example, or an old-fashioned notebook: whatever you find easiest.) Recall, when I say “projects,” I mean something substantial enough to require multiple sessions to complete. (Strategies for containing smaller commitments, wh...

In maintaining these two lists, you’re simulating the core dynamic of a pull-based workflow. The number of things on which you’re actively working is limited to a fixed, small quantity, freeing you from a sense of frenzied overload and minimizing the overhead tax discussed earlier in this chapter. The problem, of course, is that the colleagues or clients pushing projects toward you don’t know about your fancy simulated system, and might get frustrated at your visible lack of progress on their demands. To avoid a barrage of incessant prodding, you need to combine your lists with a smart intake procedure. This is the step we’ll discuss next. SIMULATED PULL, PART 2: INTAKE PROCEDURE When adding a new project to your holding tank, it’s important to update the source of this new obligation about what they should expect. To do so, send an acknowledgment message that formally acknowledges the project that you’re committing to complete, but that also includes the following three pieces of extra information: (1) a request for any additional details you need from the source before you can start the project, (2) a count of the number of existing projects already on your lists, and (3) an estimate of when you expect to complete this new work. After sending this message, label the project with the time estimate you included in your acknowledgment message so you won’t later forget. Notice, when making this estimate, you can look at the estimates on all of your existing projects to help ...

If you fall behind on a project, update your estimate and inform the person who originally sent you the work about the delay. The key here is transparency. Be clear about what’s going on, and deliver on your promises, even if these promises have to change. Never let a project just drop through the cracks and hope it will be forgotten. If your colleagues and clients don’t trust you to deliver, they won’t stop bothering you. This observation is important if you want to succeed with this method. We often believe those we work with care only about getting results as fast as possible. But this isn’t true. Often what they really want is the ability to hand something off and not have to worry about whether or not it will be accomplished. If they trust you, they’ll give you latitude to finish things on your own terms. Relief, in other words, trumps expediency. A secondary benefit of a good intake procedure is that it often leads people to withdraw their requests. It’s common, for example, for a boss to shoot off an idea to an employee on a whim. When this request gets formalized, however, and the boss sees that they need to provide you with more information, and they’re confronted with the reality of your current workload, they might simply respond, “On second thought, let’s put a pin in this one for now.” Sometimes, a little friction is all it takes to slow down a torrent of incoming work. SIMULATED PULL, PART 3: LIST CLEANING You should update and clean your lists once a week. I...

Finally, when cleaning your lists, look for projects that have become redundant or have been rendered obsolete by subsequent developments.

In these cases, remove the outdated projects from your lists. But before you do so, send a quick note to their original source letting them know. Simulating a pull-based workflow works only if you maintain transparency.

when it comes to our understanding of productivity, timescale matters.

Our exhausting tendency to grind without relief, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, is more arbitrary than we recognize.

We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness.

We can condense these ideas into a pragmatic principle as follows: PRINCIPLE #2: WORK AT A NATURAL PACE Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.

Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performative rewards of unwavering urgency. There will always be more work to do. You should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.

Working with unceasing intensity is artificial and unsustainable. In the moment, it might exude a false sense of usefulness, but when continued over time, it estranges us from our fundamental nature, generates misery, and, from a strictly economic perspective, almost certainly holds us back from reaching our full capabilities. A more natural, slower, varied pace to work is the foundation of true productivity in the long term.

The pseudo-productivity mindset is uncomfortable with spreading out work on an important project, as time not spent hammering on your most important goals seems like time wasted.

The slow productivity mindset, by contrast, finds advantages to a more languid pace. Frequent cold starts can inject more creativity into your efforts,

I suggest, however, also crafting a plan that covers an even larger scale: what you would like to accomplish in the next five years or so. The specific choice of five years is somewhat arbitrary.

The key to this suggestion, however, is that your time horizon should include at least several years.

The idea that adding more plans to your life can help you slow down might seem paradoxical. The magic here is in the way that this strategy expands the timescales at which you’re evaluating your productivity.

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.

A reality of personal productivity is that humans are not great at estimating the time required for cognitive endeavors.

When it comes to planning pursuits for which we lack physical intuition, however, we’re guessing more than we realize, leading us to gravitate toward best-case scenarios for how long things might take. We seem to seek the thrill that comes from imagining a wildly ambitious timeline during our planning:

By deploying a blanket policy of doubling these initial estimates, you can counter this instinct toward unjustified optimism. The result: plans that can be completed at a more leisurely pace. The fear here, of course, is that by doubling these timelines, you’ll drastically reduce what you accomplish. But your original plans were never realistic or sustainable in the first place. A key tenet of slow productivity is that grand achievement is built on the steady accumulation of modest results over time. This path is long. Pace yourself. SIMPLIFY YOUR WORKDAY We arrive, finally, at the smallest timescale relevant to our discussion of taking longer: the individual day. One of the central joys of slowing down your work pace is that it frees you from needing to attack every day with frantic intensity. To reap this benefit, however, you actually have to simplify your daily schedule. Toning down your seasonal and long-term plans won’t help if you persist in filling every hour of the current day with more work than you can hope to complete. All three timescales must be tamed together. To create more reasonable workdays, I have two suggestions: first, reduce the number of tasks you schedule, and second, reduce the number of appointments on your calendar. In other words, cut back on what you plan to accomplish while increasing your available time. The first suggestion is simple to implement: apply the heuristic of reducing whatever task list you come up with for a given day by somewhe...

FORGIVE YOURSELF An important coda to this discussion about taking longer is to acknowledge its psychological perils. Timing work is tricky. Especially when it comes to complicated projects. Sometimes you might let something drag on too long: you miss deadlines or opportunities; you realize you’ve fallen behind on your vision; you imagined you were Lin-Manuel Miranda slowly cultivating a masterpiece, but then one day realize you’ve actually just been procrastinating. It’s tempting to react to these periods of depressed productivity by assigning yourself a penance of crushing busyness. If you’re exhausted, you tell yourself, you can’t be accused of laziness. I want to push back on this reaction. Not only is it unsustainable, but it won’t, in the long run, get you any closer to producing work that matters. It’s okay if your efforts to take longer sometimes temporarily lead you off your chosen path. It happens to everyone who has ever tried to accomplish something important.

This aspect of working at a natural pace is hard to get right, and you will be disappointed from time to time. But the humane response to this reality is obvious: Forgive yourself. Then ask, “What’s next?” The key to meaningful work is in the decision to keep returning to the efforts you find important. Not in getting everything right every time.

This seasonal approach to work, in which you vary the intensity and focus of your efforts throughout the year, resonates with many who encounter it.

The reality of our current moment is that professional seasonality of this type has become rare, especially in knowledge work.

To work without change or rest all year would have seemed unusual to most of our ancestors.

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. The concrete strategies that follow are designed to help those in standard contemporary jobs (e.g., not financially independent early twentieth-century artists) to reclaim at least some degree of natural variation in their efforts. SCHEDULE SLOW SEASONS

DEFINE A SHORTER WORK YEAR

IMPLEMENT “SMALL SEASONALITY” Seasonality doesn’t refer only to slowing work for entire seasons. Varying your intensity at smaller timescales can also prove useful in achieving a more natural pace. The general goal for this proposition is to help you avoid working at a constant state of anxious high energy, with little change, throughout the entire year.

No Meeting Mondays Don’t schedule appointments on Mondays. You don’t need to make a public announcement about this decision. When people ask when you’re free for a meeting or a call, just stop suggesting slots on that particular day. Because Monday represents only 20 percent of your available time, you can usually implement a meeting ban of this type without other people feeling like you’re excessively unavailable. The benefit to you, however, is significant, because it allows a more gradual transition from the weekend back into the week. Sunday nights become less onerous when the calendar for your next day is gloriously uncluttered. This reduced distraction also 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. Other days, of course, could also work just as well. Perhaps keeping Fridays clear of meetings works better for the pace of your particular job, or you find more value in maintaining a clear day in the middle of the week. The key to this idea is maintaining some bastion of peace amid an otherwise cluttered calendar. See a Matinee Once a Month There’s something about entering a movie theater on a weekday afternoon that resets your mind. The context is so novel—“most people are at work right now!”—that it shakes you loose from your standard state of anxious reactivity. This mental transformation is cleansing and something you should seek on a regular basis. My suggestion ...

The key observation here is that even a modest schedule of weekday escapes can be sufficient to diminish the exhaustion of an otherwise metronome-regular routine. Schedule Rest Projects It can be stressful to start blocking out large chunks of time on your calendar for a major new project. Each new appointment you add represents less flexibility and more intense work in your near-future schedule. As your calendar continues to fill during busy periods, a sense of mild despair can arise. How will I ever get this all done? A clever way to balance this stress is to pair each major work project with a corresponding rest project. The idea is simple: after putting aside time on your calendar for a major work project, schedule in the days or weeks immediately following it time to pursue something leisurely and unrelated to your work.

The key is to obtain a proportional balance. Hard leads to fun. The more hardness you face, the more fun you will enjoy soon after. Even if these rest projects are relatively small compared with the work that triggers them, this back-and-forth rhythm can still induce a sustaining experience of variation. Work in Cycles

Adopting some notion of cycles in your own work can be understood as a more structured implementation of both the rest project and seasonal quiet quitting strategies described above. You can propose the idea of making cycles a formal policy, pointing to the Basecamp handbook as support. Or, if you worry about how this suggestion will be received, you can quietly implement cycles without anyone knowing. The two-week cooldowns are too short for you to develop a reputation for shirking major initiatives. If anything, your increased intensity during the cycles themselves will probably be noticed more, shifting your employer’s opinion of you toward the positive.

While it’s undoubtedly true that important projects often require temporary periods of maximum intensity, I reject the idea that it’s common for such projects to be fully completed in singular bursts of unwavering energy.

sometimes cultivating a natural pace isn’t just about the time you dedicate to a project, but also the context in which the work is completed.

By taking care in your choice of physical spaces and rituals, you can not only transform the experience of your efforts into something more interesting and sustainable, but more fully tap into your latent brilliance. The trick, of course, is in identifying your own personalized version of Mary Oliver’s long walks through the woods. The concrete advice that follows will help you in this pursuit. MATCH YOUR SPACE TO YOUR WORK An obvious heuristic for constructing a more effective space for your work is to match elements of your physical surroundings to what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

Whenever I see a generic home office, with its white bookcases and office-supply-store wall hangings, I can’t help but think about all the ways in which its inhabitant could remake the setting into something more tailored to the work it supports. STRANGE IS BETTER THAN STYLISH