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Slow Productivity
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Slow Productivity

The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Cal Newport
Portfolio, 2024
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9

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Recommendation

A peek inside any office reveals that knowledge workers seem inordinately busy. But are they accomplishing anything of value? Rather than accept overwhelm and burnout as inevitable, Cal Newport, a Georgetown professor of computer science, urges you to embrace a counterintuitive philosophy: “slow productivity” — that is, slow down, do less, and do better. Newport’s refreshing treatise aims to help free knowledge workers from the trap of “pseudo-productivity.” He urges workers and managers to step away from hustle culture and endless to-do lists and pursue purposeful accomplishment.

Summary

Knowledge workers need a new work philosophy: “slow productivity.”

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed many knowledge workers’ already-troubled relationships with the notion of productivity to the breaking point. As companies pressured their overwhelmed employees to continue working “like normal,” despite the new stressors and practical challenges the pandemic presented, many began openly questioning the point of the nonstop, unsustainable levels of busyness. Millions participated in a trend that came to be known as the “Great Resignation” — quitting their high-pressure jobs in favor of less demanding ones. Others embraced “quiet quitting”: giving a minimum performance at work. 

As journalist Celeste Headlee noted in her 2021 book Do Nothing, modern knowledge workers are not only grappling with being “overworked and overstressed” but with the fact that, regardless of how hard they work, employers keep expecting more. Theories about what lies behind the new wave of worker distress have abounded online. Some blame employer greed; others point the finger at hustle culture or consider it the inevitable...

About the Author

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University, is a founding member of Georgetown’s Center for Digital Ethics. He hosts the Deep Questions podcast and is the author of Deep Work, A World Without Email, and Digital Minimalism.

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