Book Review: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
You may be forgiven for thinking this is the typical business book, though instead of titling a characteristic (“Range,” “Framers,” etc.) author Cal Newport discusses “slow productivity.” This can and has turned heads when I bring it up, “we’re being paid to get a job done here…” though this book offers candid advice on getting to a manageable pace. This book further distances itself from most modern business books as Newport can actually write. I went through the book slowly, though it is a fast read.
Newport’s main contribution is not a new, better way to measure productive knowledge work (he admits in the end that it is still difficult), but a way of reorganizing and rethinking the way we accomplish work sustainably.
- Do fewer things
- Work at a natural pace
- Relentless pursuit of quality
There are many similarities between these tactics and Stephen Covey’s which made it much easier to understand. I’ve begun to reorganize my work this way with the goal of creating space for deep work, the subject of another of Newport’s books.
The part I struggle the most with is the last of the three, pursuing quality. The trouble is that the value of quality has never been lower. We have been conditioned that fast and cheap are more valuable than quality and this shows up in everything from product choice, to accepting AI slop as good enough in many applications. How do you really stand out by focusing on quality when this is perceived as needlessly expensive whether in work or in products you produce?
Perhaps this is the point of the book, a rethinking of what counts as good work. Today, exists what he terms “pseudo-productivity,” that activity that seems important, but does little to indicate the production of anything useful. Slow productivity rejects this and instead gives the practioner greater freedom over his or her life while creating better outcomes. Someone will value that enough to at least to give that worker that benefit.
