Slow Productivity Crash Course

Summary

In this video, author Cal Newport explains the concept of 'slow productivity,' his proposed solution to knowledge workers' growing discomfort with mainstream notions of productivity. Slow productivity offers an alternative, more sustainable approach built around three key principles: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. Newport traces the history of productivity notions, arguing that 'pseudo-productivity' focused on constant busyness is no longer tenable, causing burnout. By shifting focus to quality over quantity of output, working on fewer projects at once, and embracing natural work/life rhythms, Newport believes knowledge workers can find more meaning, fulfillment and impressiveness in their work.

Takeaways

• 😊 Slow productivity is an alternative definition of productivity that produces impressive, profitable work in a sustainable way without burning people out
• 🤔 We don't have a clear definition of productivity for knowledge workers like we do for farmers and factory workers
• 😮 Pseudoproductivity uses visible activity as a proxy for useful work, which is not sustainable with more digital tools enabling endless tasks
• 👥 Do fewer things to minimize the overhead tax of open obligations and reduce cognitive load
• 📝 Use a public pull list to take control over your own workload instead of letting others push endless tasks onto your plate
• 🕰 Judge productivity on longer timescales, not just what you did today or this week
• 🌴 Introduce seasonality to your schedule with quiet periods of lower intensity like our ancestors had
• ✨ Obsess over quality to make your work more fulfilling, force you to slow down, and give you more leverage
• 🎨 Study the masters in your field to improve your own taste and ability to identify high quality work
• 😌 Read the book for a full, detailed approach to transform to a slow productivity mindset

Q & A

What problem led Cal Newport to study the concept of slow productivity?

He began hearing growing discomfort from people about the general notion of productivity, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. People felt overwhelmed by the constant pressure to do more work and be productive.

How does Cal Newport define pseudo-productivity?

Pseudo-productivity uses visible activity as a proxy for useful labor. It's the idea that if someone sees you doing something, that's better than not doing anything, even if the work itself isn't that valuable.

What are the three main principles of slow productivity?

The three main principles are: 1) Do fewer things 2) Work at a natural pace 3) Obsess over quality.

How can a public pull list help you take on fewer obligations?

A public pull list forces people to transparently add tasks instead of just pushing them onto you. Seeing your existing workload may make them less likely to add more. You can also point to it to explain why you can't take on more concurrent tasks.

Why is constant intensity and long hours of work unnatural for humans?

Studies of hunter-gatherers show our ancient ancestors worked in bursts with downtime in between. Agricultural societies also had seasons where work was intensive but winter had little work. Working at full intensity year-round is a modern construct.

What is quiet quitting and how can it create seasonality?

Quiet quitting means doing the bare minimum at work. Doing it for 1-2 months allows you to create a 'winter' rest period without your boss noticing, then you can ramp back up and do impressive work during the other seasons.

How does quality help enable the other principles of slow productivity?

Obsessing over quality makes your work more fulfilling, forces you to slow down to improve, and builds leverage to take on fewer obligations.

Why study the masters in your field?

Studying the acknowledged masters in your field improves your taste and appreciation for what is possible. This allows you to improve the quality of your own work at a faster rate.

What was the key problem Cal Newport identified with productivity?

There is no clear definition or way to measure productivity for knowledge workers. Things like quantity of output or time spent working do not necessarily equate to valuable productivity.

How is slow productivity different from traditional notions of productivity?

Slow productivity focuses on quality, working on fewer things, variability of pace, and sustainability. Traditional productivity tends to care mostly about quantity and constant intensity.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Introducing slow productivity: an alternative to pseudo productivity

Cal introduces slow productivity as an alternative definition of productivity for knowledge work in the digital age. Instead of using visible activity as a proxy for useful labor, slow productivity is based on 3 principles: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, obsess over quality. These emulate traditional knowledge workers like artists with complete flexibility to see what works, adapted for modern jobs.

05:00

😮 Pseudo productivity leads to unsustainable overwhelm

Pseudo productivity of using visible busyness as a proxy for useful work was fine until technology enabled endless work from anywhere. This led to ubiquity of work, overwhelm, burnout. The pandemic amplified this.

10:02

😊 Principle 1: Do fewer things

More obligations brings overhead tax of admin and cognitive load. 50 things vs 10 on your plate takes more time even if you only work on 1 per day. Can fall into overload spiral. Public poll list: shared doc of workload queue makes adding/tracking projects transparent.

15:02

🏃‍♂️ Principle 2: Work at a natural pace

We use wrong timescales to judge productivity, when the greats like John McPhee did little some days. We also work constantly at high intensity unlike our evolutionary design. Introduce seasonality like quiet quitting for a couple months.

20:02

🌟 Principle 3: Obsess over quality

Obsessing over quality makes work fulfilling, forces you to slow down, gains leverage to shed obligations. Key is improving taste: study masters in your field to appreciate what's good, accelerating your own progress.

25:04

😊 Conclusion: Put these 3 principles into action

These 3 big ideas of slow productivity will improve sustainability and quality right away. But read the book for full transformation to the slow mindset.

Keywords

💡productivity

The main theme of the video is redefining productivity for knowledge workers. Productivity is initially poorly defined, leading to 'pseudo-productivity' that focuses too much on constant busyness. Slow productivity offers a more sustainable and effective approach.

💡pseudo-productivity

Pseudo-productivity means using visible activity as a proxy for useful labor. It leads knowledge workers to constant busyness out of fear of seeming unproductive.

💡slow food movement

The slow food movement promoted traditional food cultures for better taste and sustainability. Slow productivity is inspired by this, promoting traditional work cultures for better quality and sustainability.

💡flexibility

Traditional knowledge workers often had more flexibility in how and when they worked. Slow productivity aims to regain some of this flexibility that enables better work.

💡overhead tax

Overhead tax refers to the administrative burden that comes with each obligation on your plate. Doing fewer things reduces this tax.

💡natural pace

Working at a natural, varied pace aligned with human needs and energy levels. This contrasts with forcing constant intensity each day in an office.

💡seasonality

Introducing seasons with different work intensity levels during the year, inspired by agricultural cycles. This creates a natural pace.

💡quiet quitting

Temporarily and secretly quiet quitting for a couple months induces seasonality without formal schedule changes.

💡quality

Obsessing over continually improving quality is crucial for slow productivity to work sustainably and provide leverage.

💡taste

Cultivating taste by studying masters in your field accelerates the quality improvement process.

Highlights

Slow productivity is an alternative definition of productivity that produces impressive, useful, profitable results in a sustainable way that energizes people.

Pseudo productivity uses visible activity as a proxy for useful labor, which is not sustainable in the age of digital networks.

The 3 principles of slow productivity are: 1) Do fewer things 2) Work at a natural pace 3) Obsess over quality.

Every obligation on your to-do list has an overhead tax of administrative work and cognitive load required to keep the task alive.

Using a public pull list allows you to transparently display your workload so people can see your capacity before assigning you more work.

We often use the wrong timescales to measure productivity - creativity and impact emerge over months and years, not days and weeks.

Modern knowledge work happens at an unnaturally constant pace compared to our evolutionary and agricultural history of variability.

You can "quiet quit" for a couple months a year to introduce seasonality and mental rejuvenation without your boss noticing.

Obsessing over quality makes work more fulfilling, necessitates slowing down, and builds leverage to gain more autonomy.

Getting better requires not just practice but also improving your taste by studying the masters in your field.

Putting these 3 core principles into action - doing less, pacing naturally, pursuing quality - will slow down and improve your work life.

The book expands on these ideas for transforming your productivity mindset in a detailed, step-by-step way.

These initial practical steps around managing obligations, seasonality, and studying experts can kickstart changes.

Pseudo productivity forces an unsustainable pace of constant intensity.

A public pull list brings transparency to workload capacity that discourages people from overassigning you.

Transcripts

[Music]

hi there I'm Cal Newport if you are

watching this video this means that

either you pre-ordered my book slow

productivity or someone who did

pre-order the book has shared this video

link with you either way welcome I'm

glad you're here now I'm calling this

video a slow productivity crash course

my goal is to give you just enough

information that you can actually start

putting the big ideas of slow

productivity into action in your current

life even before you get my book with

all of the extra details and explanation

that it contains so this will be your

quickest route from getting from zero to

having a notable amount of slow

productivity in your professional

personal life now here's the way I'm

going to structure this I'm going to

start by introducing the concept of slow

productivity so you know what we're

talking about and then going to go

through the three main principles of

this philosophy and for each pull out a

single piece of particularly effective

practical advice from my book to detail

to you right here so when we're done

with this crash course you'll not only

know what slow productivity is but

you'll have a concrete thing to put into

action your life along the three main

principles of this philosophy once you

have a taste for this of course read the

book and you'll get a much more nuanced

detailed

approach all right so let's get started

with what slow productivity is to

explain this let me start with the

problem I detected that instigated my

study of this issue it was early

pandemic we're talking 2020 Summer 2020

spring 2020 when I began to hear from my

podcast listeners and newsletter readers

a growing

discomfort with the general notion of

productivity now as someone who tackles

uh the intersection of digital

technology in our lives and because of

that does a lot of writing about the

workplace and digital distractions and

how to stay productive among digital

distractions this was a topic that was

true to my interest so I began to

investigate what's going on here why do

we have this growing discomfort with the

notion of productivity the answer I

found is that we don't really have a

sensical definition of what we even mean

by

productivity now if we look into other

economic sectors productivity is very

well defined if you're a

farmer productivity is clear bushels

produced per acre of land you can

measure it you can give it a number you

can experiment with different

agricultural systems and see how they

impact this number in industrial

manufacturing productivity is precisely

defined how many model's per manh hour

of Labor are we producing you can

measure this you can put a number on it

when you change the way you build your

cars when you switch let's say from the

craft message to the assembly line you

can see that number get

better but then we get knowledge work

this is something that emerges as a

major economic sector really in the mid

20th century it's 1959 that the term

knowledge work itself is first coined by

Peter Ducker when we get the knowledge

work productivity gets a little bit more

hazy it's not so clear to Define if you

take the average knowledge worker

someone today that works at a computer

screen somehow associated with an office

or some sort of business that produces

mainly products out of uh the human

brain what do we

measure there's no bushels of wheat we

can just tabulate or numbers of model

T's that were produced for a given

number of labor hours most knowledge

workers actually do multiple different

types of things their jobs have multiple

roles and multiple types of work

products uh it's typically not

comparable from one worker to another so

what I do might be different than the

exact sort of things that you're

producing there's also not clearly

defined systems in knowledge work if I

run a factory I can tell you exactly how

I build cars in knowledge work the tools

you use to organize your own efforts are

up to

you they're not written down somewhere

they're not somewhere that we can study

and say this way of working is producing

these type of results so productivity

didn't really work in the ways we were

used to thinking about this concept in

the world of knowledge work so what do

we do because we have managers we have

to manage something so what did we do

about this problem well early in my book

I argue we invented a clever New Concept

that I call pseudo

productivity pseudo productivity said

let's use visible

activity as a proxy for useful labor so

if I see you doing something that's

better than not seeing you do something

and that'll be the best way that we can

approximate you know useful labor so I

want to see you here in the office doing

things if you're goofing off too much I

will be mad uh if our company needs to

turn itself around we do so by saying be

here longer I want to see you in the

office more this was pseudo productivity

this was the implicit law of the land

and knowledge work since at least the

midcentury and it worked okay it's not a

very accurate way of measuring labor but

whatever you know when the boss comes

around put down the magazine uh if

you're at the water cooler pretend like

you were talking about work instead of

sports it's

fine but then something else happened

the tech Revolution what I call the

front office it

transformation we got computers we got

networks we got mobile commuting we got

laptops and smartphones we got email and

we got chat and now suddenly Soo

productivity became

unsustainable we had more possible work

to do than we ever could handle we had

the ability to do this work in any

situation not just when we were in an

office building we could uh interact

with people about this work at any point

the combination of more work is better

than less and you have endless work you

can do at any point that was

combustible that began leading to this

uh this ubiquity of our jobs the sense

of work following us everywhere this

sense of uh more and more work could

come at us through tools like email so

we had more and more things on our plate

burnout and exhaustion began to follow

by the time we get to the pandemic this

just gets Amplified even worse and

people said I've had enough I don't know

what productivity is but I do know this

urge I have to always have to be doing

more work is killing me and I'm done

with it

that was the stage that led to slow

productivity so what is slow

productivity it's an alternative

definition of this concept pseud

productivity does not work for knowledge

work in an age of digital networks we

need to explore alternative definitions

of productivity that can

a produce really impressive useful

profitable results whatever it is we're

actually trying to do professionally

speaking and BB

sustainable us human beings can pursue

the definition and not get burnt out but

instead get

energized slow productivity was my

attempt to come up with that definition

and the way I came up with this

definition is inspired by the slow food

movement I said let's go back and study

how people have solved this problem

before and I went back and in the book I

study what I call traditional knowledge

workers people historically who uh

produce things with their mind but due

to historical Circumstances had a ton of

flexibility in how they did it poets

scientist writers artists people who had

maybe patronage uh to pay their bills or

they uh didn't have to work and they

could do their art full-time or their

art was very successful so they got lots

of flexibility I was looking for people

that were in this rare historical

circumstance of I'm trying to build

things with my mind and I have complete

flexibility to see what works and what

didn't I then draw from the hisorical

examples to isolate some key principles

and then adapt them to knowledge work in

the 21st century to adapt them to the

constraints of I'm an entrepreneur and I

have clients who need things to adapt

them to the constraints of I work for an

office my boss doesn't care and needs

things from

me so just like the slow food movement

retrieve food culture from traditional

approaches to food I am trying to build

a more sustainable and effective notion

of productivity by pulling from these

traditional knowledge work cultures the

definition I came up with is built

around three principles it says the

right way to produce impressive work in

a way that's sustainable and energizing

is to build your work around three

principles number one do fewer things

number two work at a natural pace number

three obsess over quality these three

things together is a much more

Humane a much more sustainable a much

more intuitive natural way to produce

work that we really are impressed by

work that we really love it's a much

better alternative to pseudo

productivity so here's what I want to do

now moving forward in this crash course

we're going to go through those three

principles one by one and for each I

will give you a specific piece of

concrete advice for my book so you can

start putting some of that principle

into action your life right away way all

right makes sense let's get

rolling let's start with the first

principle of slow productivity which is

to do fewer things now here's the

motivation for this principle it is easy

in our current age of digital

communication for people just to push

work your direction hey Cal can you do

this can you get back to me on this hey

what do you know about this hey can you

jump on a call and help me schedule

what's going on with this upcoming

client the average knowledge worker

today has significant

more obligations to which they're

committed at any one time than it was

let's say 20 years ago 30 years ago 40

years ago we have more on our plate

right now than ever

before now there's a real cost to this

and I I detail this in my book but

there's a real cost to having too much

to do and the reason is every obligation

you've committed

to that's on your task list brings with

it what I call an overhead tax so so

long as that commitment is on your plate

there is a certain amount of

administrative work required from you to

keep this task alive this might be uh

emails about it people checking in on

how it's going it might be weekly status

meetings that you have to jump on as

long as this obligation is active it's

also just a cognitive overhead tax of I

know this is something I've committed to

do and it's there somewhere in the back

of my head there's a little voice like

okay this is here

we we have this thing to do we're not

working on it right now this is a

problem so because everything you commit

to do brings with it this overhead

tax the more things you put on your

plate the more time is dedicated to

paying overhead tax so there's actually

a cost to having 50 things on your to-do

list versus 10 even if you're only

working on one thing per day regardless

of whether you have 10 or 50 it makes a

difference this quantity makes a

difference because of the the overhead

tax eventually what happens when you've

agreed to do too many things is that you

spend more and more of your time paying

the overhead tax going to status

meetings answering emails just thinking

in the back of your mind about all you

have to do more and more of your time

gets spent on the tax less of this time

gets spent actually doing the work and

you fall farther behind more things pile

the amount of overhead tax increases it

can be a really nasty overload spiral

that you can fall into so you really

want to be doing fewer things that's a

key property to slowing down in your

approach to work there's a lot of ways

to do this I want to give you here one

particular piece of advice that comes

out of the book that I think is

delightfully

provocative and that is using what I'm

going to call a public poll

list p l l all right let me explain to

you how this works the typical way that

someone can put work on your plate is

what we would call the push model I have

this thing I want Cal to do boom I push

it onto his plate I don't have to worry

about it anymore maybe I'll bother him

occasionally like hey have you done this

yet in fact I'll be annoyed if you don't

do this right away because I want you to

do this I pushed it to you you are the

person I'm waiting for on to get this

back and so this is sort of on your

shoulder so yeah hey I push something to

you where's my

thing the alternative of approach to

work is pulling p u l l i n g instead of

letting everyone just push things onto

my plate that I'm now juggling I pull

things onto my plate when I'm ready to

work on something

else now from a cognitive perspective

pull systems in general are clearly much

better because you're minimizing

overhead tax I'm only working on a small

number of things at a time so the amount

of overhead tax I'm paying at any one

time is

constrained and when I'm done I pull in

something else now here's the thing this

is not reducing the total amount of work

that you

produce because even if you uh have

everything on your plate at the same

time you can only spend so much time

working on one thing at a time right I

mean you're not uh the amount of time

you spend working on things actually

will probably be larger in a pole system

because you're spending less time paying

overhead tax so the amount of things you

actually finish in a month in a pole

system might be much larger than if you

took all of these things and put them on

your plate all at once and you had to

waste so much time just Ling the

admin so a pbase system in general it's

not only going to make you feel much

better and slow things down you're

probably going to get more work done so

how do we Implement a pole based system

well in my book I give a really

intricate complicated approach for how

an individual who works inside of a

large company can stealthily Implement a

poll system in a way that people don't

even know you're doing it but it gives

you many of the advantages here I want

to give you a more direct way of doing

it this is something that can be

deployed if you have either e the

flexibility or the hutzpah to actually

try this I think it's a cool idea here's

how it works you have a public shared

document this is your uh project

list it's

divided at the top of the list you have

uh

pending or

waiting and at the bottom under some

sort of horizontal divider actively

working

on you have no more than one or two

things that you're actively working on

everything else goes above it so here's

what happens now when someone says hey

Cal can you do this for me you say okay

if it sounds reasonable yeah I could do

this project for you um add it to the

end of my queue show them the document

so yeah just type you know add it to the

top of the list um make sure you include

under it any information I need or

pointers or whatever I need to actually

like make progress on this once time

comes to work on it so already you're

putting the onus on their plate they

can't just asymmetrically put push this

to you hey get work on this Cal period

Send I'm done they have to write it down

they have to give you all the

information this itself that step itself

might clear out some obligations they

might give up more importantly however

they see transparently your

workload oh there's five other projects

ahead of me in this

queue and down at the bottom is what

Cal's working on right now so now I know

where my project stands and how much

work Cal actually has now that alone

also is going to clear out more projects

before they actually make it onto your

plate because when they get to this list

and they see the five things you have

they say you know what you're

busy uh I'm not going to bother with you

this now so like half of the incoming

projects disappear when people have to

confront what they are doing to your

list you already have all these things

they're adding something new for the

projects that remain you now have

transparency on their

status so you can say to this person hey

keep an eye on this document I update

this as I work on new things I move them

down to the active and I move everything

else down in the in the waiting queue so

at any time you have a question about

where am I on this project just go to

that shared document and you'll see

where it is you don't have to email me

you don't have to bother me you can see

it now you can now as the as the person

executing this work you can now

comfortably work on one thing at a time

pull in the next thing when it's done

everyone else who's giv you work can see

their status and if they feel guilty

they can take these things off your

plate it's very hard for them to

complain the only complaint they can

give is I think my thing should be a

higher priority than something else and

okay that's a fair argument let them

make it and if they're right you can

swap the priority but they probably

won't make that argument uh the other

argument they can make is I want you to

work at all these at the same time but

there's a clear response to that that's

stupid why would I work at six things

concurrently I need to do these one at a

time it'll be much faster

overall there is a hard logic to what

you're doing here that's hard to push

back back against all right so using

this shared poll list is a fantastic way

if not a little bit deliberately

provocative to shift the way you think

about workload management no you can't

just throw stuff on my plate I'll pull

stuff when I'm ready this is one of many

ways to take a step towards this first

principle of slow productivity work on

fewer things all right let's talk now

about the second principle of slow

productivity which is to work at a

natural pace now in my book I

identify multiple issues with the way we

think about the timing of our work and

there's two issues in particular that I

want to highlight here one we use the

wrong time scales when measuring

productivity so we often think about how

productive was I today and if I wasn't

busy all day long working on lots of

different things and making progress on

lots of different things

I'll say to

myself I was not productive

today however when we study people who

actually produce things of real value

people that we really admire for their

creative knowledge work skills the time

scales at which they're productive are

often much longer we care not what they

did last week we cared what they

produced over the last 20 years I open

my book for example on John MC Now by

any reasonable standard of productivity

the writer John MC is productive he's

written something like 25 or more books

he's won a pullit surprise for one of

them he's been nominated for National

book awards twice he's been one of the

most famed writers for the New Yorker

since

1969 and has been writing regularly for

them ever since he's in his 90s right

now incredibly productive writing career

but I highlight in the book a story

about him working on a particular famous

article of him uh and he told the story

of working on this article and the story

of working on this particular article

involved a fay period where all he did

towards this article was lay on his back

on a picnic table in the backyard of his

house in Princeton New Jersey staring up

at the leaves of a tree just thinking

how am I going to make this article work

so if we zoom in on one of those

particular days in John MC's

illustrative career we say like look how

unproductive he is he's laying there

he's not doing anything he's not

answering emails he's not getting after

it on the typewriter he's not going into

his cold plunge and getting fired up to

make sure that he can handle his notion

powerered 17 context to-do list he laid

on a picnic table didn't do much but

when we zoom out to the period of a year

we said oh that year he produced this

great article on the pine Barons that's

what he was working on and it became an

acclaimed art uh article we zoom out

even more to his whole career we're like

man over two dozen books a politer two

national book award nominations this guy

is productive so we often use the wrong

time scales uh when it comes to

productivity and that forces us to speed

up

unnaturally now why should we care about

it well this is the second thing I

wanted to tell you about what we get

wrong about Pace we work in the Modern

Age The Modern Age of offices in an

incredibly unnatural artificial way we

go to an office 5 days a week we're

supposed to be working hard this is the

dictates of pseudo productivity at least

eight hours each of those days and we do

this week after week all year long this

is not the way that humans are wired to

work I get into this both the paleolog

research uh the anthropological research

um the historical research I pull from a

lot of different threads in my book to

argue hey if we look back at uh the

Paleolithic we have evidence from the

studies of extant hunter gatherer

communities that our work was in the

scale of just an individual day way up

and down a really intense period where

I'm in the middle of a hunt or foraging

but there may be hours of a midday kind

of break because it's hot and then

another intense period over there we we

didn't work hard all day long then we

jump forward to the Neolithic this idea

that we would uh be working all year

round at similar average levels of

intensity also made no sense no we'd

work super hard in the fall the Harvest

but in the winter we barely worked at

all we instead had you know festivals

and other types of things to keep our

sanity when we had no work to do so

there's nothing more unnatural to the

long history of hum kind than just

trying to work all day hard every day

day after day week after

week these two things fit together there

two issues with how we think about the

pacing of work to have a more slower

approach to work means you need a more

natural pace by which I mean a more

varied pace and I give a lot of advice

in the book in this some of this is

about your own expectations taking being

longer on projects being comfortable

with making something the work of the

next 10 years and not the work of the

next 6 months uh but there's a

particular section in this book where I

get super practical about how to break

free from this constant level of

intensity type of work that we do day in

and day out and one idea I had in there

that I want to relay to you now is

to

introduce

seasonality to your knowledge worker job

now seasonality means like in the

Neolithic some Seasons you work harder

than others you get intensity growth

recharging natural give and take that

avoids burnout and allows you to more

fully Embrace The Human Experience now

how do you get

seasonality if let's say you control

your job you're an entrepreneur you run

your own company it's just you maybe and

some uh part-time your solar preneur you

have some part-time assistance it's

mainly you okay you could just actually

take months off

I give the example in the book of my

friend and the entrepreneur and author

Jenny Blake who actually does this he

just builds her annual schedule around

the idea that she takes two months off

every summer turns out no one cares her

clients don't know whatever this is just

the way she works and it's hugely

important for

you but what about if you're not an

entrepreneur what if you work for

another company you can't just take two

months off this is the idea I want to

underscore here quiet quit for a couple

months at a time now quiet quitting was

this whole phenomenon from

2022 that was a big deal online and then

was sort of derided it was a Jin Z

saying you know what I'm going to do the

bare minimum in my work typically this

was motivated by some somewhat

half-baked and Illy articulated uh

conflict theory late stage capitalism

type verbiage of I'm more than just my

labor Etc but there is a interesting

tactical idea underlying quiet quitting

which is you actually control

more than you might realize your

workload you can pull back say no to

more things be more strategic about what

you accept kind of disappear off

people's Radars you can pull back in

your work now the problem with quiet

quitting and this is why this movement

as a whole

faltered if you do this all the time if

you're always quiet quitting it will

eventually be noticed like what are you

doing here uh you're not catching our

attention as someone who's doing

proactive interesting good work we're

not promoting you we're going to fire

you it's not aable but if you quiet quit

for a month or two no one's going to

notice so you can use quiet quitting to

actually induce seasonality in your work

without your boss actually knowing

choose a couple months maybe one month

maybe two in an already quiet

period and pull back come off the radar

don't take on new projects to start then

don't feel guilty this is your winter

for their Neolithic the equivalent of

the winter for our Neolithic ancestors

you're just going to pull back you're

going to

relax and then ramp it back up again and

do some cool stuff and be like oh yeah

Cal did this really cool thing last fall

like he's really on it if you do this

right no one on the outside will notice

but you will feel it big time on the

inside it is a more natural pace to your

work to have this seasonality and it's

going to make everything you do slower

and more sustainable all right we're

ready now to talk about the third and

final principle of slow productivity

which is to obsess over

quality in many ways this principle is

the glue that holds together the other

principles that we've talked about today

it's what makes slow productivity work

there's three things you get when you

begin to obsess over the quality of your

work one the work itself just becomes

more directly

fulfilling humans get great satisfaction

out of doing things at a high level

feeling themselves getting better

getting the rewards of this Improvement

that plays right into our motivational

centers that's going to make your work

much more

fulfilling two if you obsess over the

quality of what you

do this is going to force you

necessarily to slow down to put in place

the type of ideas we talked about in

principle one to put in place the type

of ideas we talked about in principle

two you cannot get really good at

something if you're busy you cannot get

really good at something if you're

pegging your intensity at the red line

every single day so if you make an

obsession with quality at the core of

your approach to work nothing will seem

more well motivated or natural than

trying to slow down and reduce what

you're working

on third as you get better which is what

will happen as you obsess over quality

you will gain more leverage over your

job that leverage will make it easier to

shed extra obligation to gain more

autonomy to slow down the better you get

the more opportunities you have to slow

things down so obsessive over quality is

like the engine or the glue for

everything else we talked about my book

I go into details about how to do this

and why this is important I've got some

really great case studies there but I

just want to mention one specific piece

of advice right

now the key to getting better at

something to improving your quality it's

not just putting in time to practice it

is

also improving your

taste if we really break it down how do

you actually get better at something

well there's this deliberate practice

you have to do where you design

activities that are uh structured to

push you past your comfort level and

make you better at the activity than you

were before the problem is you need a

definition of

better your taste how sophisticated and

refined your taste is is what determines

how fast and effectively you can get

better so what you want to do at the

beginning of a journey to obsess over

quality is to begin to obsess over the

masters of your

field to study the work of people that

do generally what you do really well to

understand what makes it so good to

become a connoisseur of the people who

are much better at what you do than you

are

yourself this is not just about paying

tribute to those who come before you

it's about improving your taste because

as your appreciation for what your field

could be it's

better the speed and effectiveness at

which you're yourself able to improve is

also going to accelerate if you're in

marketing study the great marketers if

you're in computer programming study the

great designers of algorithms and code

if you're in writing study great writers

if you're an artist study great artist

if you're an entrepreneur study the the

more big name entrepreneurs that came

out of nowhere and built Big Industries

how did they did that read their

biographies watch documentaries about

them talk to people who knew them what

did they do differently you want to be a

connoisseur of the great so that you can

make yourself better so it's not just

about getting after it and grinding and

doing hard work you have to actually

improve your ability to identify what is

good if you hope to get closer to that

good

yourself all right so that's the third

and final principle I want to talk about

again this a crash course the basics of

slow productivity one idea for doing

fewer things one idea for working at a

natural pace one idea for obsession over

quality put those three ideas into the

action and you will right away see

improvements in your life uh your

approach to work is going to slow down

your quality is going to go up

everything's going to seem more

sustainable but if you want the true

transformation to the slow productivity

mindset you got to read the book slow

prod slow

productivity available March

2024 get that book for the full detail

piece by piece breakdown of how to do it

but hopefully these ideas get you

started moving away from The Fast and

towards the much more fulfilling and

meaningful

[Music]

slow