I just finished taking notes on Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity for my wife (and eventually added my business partner into the mix as well).
To me, it was basically "How can a Grassland be productive like a Tundra?"
I found myself nodding on to everythingI read in this book and thinking “Of course. Doesn’t everyone do this?”, but I think if you are a Grassland, like Cal Newport, then there's probably a lot there to like.
Anyway, here are my notes.
THE THREE PRINCIPLES TO SLOW PRODUCTIVITY
Do fewer things.
Work at a natural pace.
Focus on quality.
DO FEWER THINGS
Limit your mission to 1-3 things, not 5+. When you have more than three then it’s almost impossible to move any of them forward. You will have more than three things on your to do list, but they should relate to your missions. I recommend reading The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papisan if you want to learn more about the idea of the Big Domino.
Limit projects by appealing to available time. Instead of saying “No, I can’t do it,” say things like “I have 11 other tasks ahead of you and won’t be able to take this on for at least two weeks.”
Estimate all tasks so you know how long they are going to take. Plan on moving forward 1 target project/mission per day.
WORK AT A NATURAL PACE
Put tasks on autopilot. Dictate regular times to complete recurring tasks. If you do them at the same time, then they take less mental load.
Create a group task so everyone on the team can all be updated. Initiate one person to dictate tasks and keep everyone updated.
Create policies to lower overhead and create symmetric assignments for how/when things will be accomplished. The example used was to make a box for reimbursements and say that anything inside of it will be done on Thursdays. Then, on Friday, have them come back to finalize once it goes to a second bin.
Prioritize projects that have a lower footprint of tasks pulling at you. For instance, write a report vs. do a conference. Even though the conference has an end point, there are more pulls on your time.
Go pro on subscriptions. Trade money for time.
DEVELOP A PROCESS
Create a pole-based list. Weigh your active projects against what you are holding later. The poles should never be out of balance.
Send intake form acknowledging receipt of project. Add in request for any information you need, a count of any projects already on list, and estimate with time for how long it will take to finalize.
Often friction will stop people from asking things of you. If you make things harder, even by a little bit, people will go find somebody else to do it.
Clean your list of tasks once a week. If you see something being bumped, ask to have it removed from your list. Take projects off list when something changes.
WORK IN SEASONS
Forager principles - Humans work best in bursts of activity and lots of downtime. We try to work always, but historically we worked in bursts with lots of downtime.
Take longer to do things. Often it takes years to do quality work, but there is lots of downtime between bursts. Grand achievement is little things over time.
Double length of every estimate. We are bad at estimating time (not me though).
Make sure less than half of your day is spent on calls. You might not make it every day, but you should balance over a week.
Protect time if you take a meeting. If you take on a 30 minute meeting, then you should schedule 30 minute of protected time.
Do not punish yourself when you feel like you're wasting your time. Embrace seasonality.
Quiet quit in one season. Stop taking projects before the beginning of that season and then don't pick up until the end of other season.
No meeting Mondays. If you don’t schedule meetings on one day probably nobody will notice.
See a matinee once a month or do another type of escape to break up the monotony. This helps jog your brain and keep you fresh.
Coordinate rest project after work project, equal time. The more hardness you face, the more fun you have.
Work in cycles. Maybe you have to be very busy sometimes, but you should always have recovery time.
Match your space to your work. If you're writing a murder mystery, work in a jail or maybe intern with a serial killer, lol. Strange is better than stylish.
Focus on rituals to prime yourself to work.
OBSESS OVER QUALITY
Do not ever write for the radio.
You have 1-2 core activities and need to be world-class at them. The rest is okay, but when a record deal comes around, everything else falls away.
Once you focus on quality, busy-ness becomes intolerable.
Don't scale your business. Leverage to get more time, not more revenue.
Become a cinephile. Appreciate fields that are different from your own to find more flexible types of excellence.
Start a discussion club. Cross-pollinate with other people who are doing high level work.
Buy a $50 notebook. A fancy notebook can help you clarify notes. In cheap notebooks you will scrawl and it will be useless to return to, but a quality tool can increase the quality of your work.
Obsession allows you to get lost in your head, but greatness forces us out of our heads before it's too late. Be one piece among many as you grow your whole industry. You don’t have to reinvent the industry with every project.
Bet on yourself to push yourself forward. Alanis Morrisette dropped out of pop because she believed she could do better.
Temporarily devote free time to important activities. This should only be done temporarily and moderately.
Reduce your salary. Don't haphazardly quit your job unless you know that people will pay for it and you can replicate the result.
Announce a schedule. Tell people who will shame you if you don't do it, or find an investor who will hold you accountable.
CONCLUSION
Slowing down isn't about protesting work. It's about finding a better way to do it.
Step back from daily grind. Productivity is orthogonal to the prevalent psuedo-productivity.
What did you think of this one? Are you going to read it now? Do you already do any of this stuff? Sound off in the comments. "