Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout Hardcover – March 5, 2024

Clearly taking the lessons to heart from this book, I finished this book, picked up and read a completely different one, and then am only now finally getting around to posting a review.This book is a retort against the common tech refrains of moving fast and breaking things and shipping now now now and how if you don’t have a fortune in VC funds at your unicorn startup by your mid 20s that you might as well just give up. To start with, as a direct pushback, he does a great job of arguing against all of the pseudo-productivity that we can all be guilty of. And this’ll sound controversial, but that’s stuff like excessive meetings or minute jira tickets or lots of detailed documents. He’s not necessarily arguing against them, but he’s making a strong argument that all of that stuff helps give us an illusion of being productive. I mean, you spend 3 hours working with your jira board, and it sure feels like you had a productive day and need a break, right? But it’s support work - it doesn’t actually move product forward or actually ship code or respond to user feedback. It’s just busyness. And while it can definitely be useful in helping drive the actual work forward, it’s when we start mistaking the support process for the actual work itself that we get ourselves into trouble. Especially once we get overwhelmed by the support work to the point of deferring the necessary stuff.And the rest of the book then goes into three major tenets - Work at a natural pace. Do fewer things. Obsess over quality. That’s his secret sauce.So instead of trying to get 8 billion things done as quickly as possible and toss as much stuff over the wall, focus on doing fewer things that you can be super passionate about and do really well. The more excited and interested you can be about those things, the easier they are to stick with, and the better quality product you’re going to produce at the end. You still need to ship at the end of the day, but you shouldn’t be so stressed out as you’re going along.As someone that will admit to several side projects which I have been tinkering with off and on for years or even more than a decade (or almost two decades for a few of them), it was nice reading something that just re-emphasizes that it can be okay to take your time with stuff and worry about getting it right and not be so frantic about the busywork. Definitely recommended.

I've long been a fan of Newport's work. I'm a former lawyer turned stay at home mom. Since leaving the traditional workplace, I've dedicated the majority of my intellectual reserves to creative writing, a pursuit I find both challenging and frustrating for a variety of reasons. I give this context so those who might read my review understand my circumstances. Even though I don't think I'm exactly the type of knowledge worker Newport envisions, some of his tips resonated deeply as the more cluttered the creative mind the more difficult it can be to access the imagination. In that respect, do less and move at a natural pace, Newport's first two tenents of slow productivity, are both useful tips.A few observations/critiques I have relating to Newport's definition of productivity. As a person who works outside the confines of a traditional workplace, I still find the notion of pseudo-productivity to be a plague upon my ability to do meaningful work. I was pleased to see Newport dedicate a section of his book to working parents. In this section he notes that even those who aren't parents may be bogged down by other caretaking responsibilities or life events and, in those cases, "the demand to prove your worth through visible activity produces inner turmoil."I would argue that proving one's worth through visible activity extends beyond the workplace. Many of us have complicated relationships with our to-do lists. Also, there's the notion that we might become physically addicted to tasks defined as "pseudo-productive" because these tasks are dopamine inducing. Think how good it feels to look at an organized closet after only a few hours of effort.On a day where I feel generally agitated due to my inability to move my creative work forward, the feeling of satisfaction of completing a small, fairly meaningless task (e.g., laundry, making beds, vacuuming, etc.) is huge. I wonder if this affects more traditional knowledge workers in the same way it affects someone like me who works from home on creative pursuits. Newport doesn't discuss the dopamine cycle associated with achieving inbox zero etc., but I'd be curious to know how hard it would be to break the cycle of pseudo productivity because of brains itching to tick things off a list.Another section of the book that spoke to me was the discussion of the challenges of working from home. Newport notes that the home is filled with the familiar and this snags our attention and destabilizes the brain space required to think clearly. He cites a neuroscientist in this section, who claims that domestic tasks ensnare our attention because they are embedded in a "thick, stress inducing matrix of underattended household tasks."I also appreciated Newport's acknowledgment that "obsess over quality" can trigger the perfectionist mind. As a merely functioning perfectionist, this resonated with me. All I do is obsess over quality. All the time. It keeps me from finishing my work. His example in this section is The Beatles creating their Sgt. Pepper album. I liked this example, but it's not super relevant to a burgeoning creative who works alone in her home office.Related to this is his discussion of developing taste. Newport cites the Ira Glass notion of "the gap," which I assume most creatives have heard of before. I appreciated Newport's acknowledgement in this section that curating taste is *also* something that takes time...not just closing the gap between your skills and your taste.Actionable takeaways for me:1. attempt to work somewhere other than my house if I'm too overwhelmed by unattended household tasks. It's not just a weakness of focus or issue with discipline. Being distracted by household chores is a function of the human brain.2. buy Scrivener to feel like a 'pro'3. Focus on the acquisition of better taste as a practice in and of itself and try to study other creative disciplines to move my work forward.

A very practical approach to finding a more natural pace of life. I'm bit into simplicity and into going deeper instead of wider, and this book gave me a lot of ways to approach both of those. Not everything applies to me, but much of it can at least be adapted to help me live the life I want to live. A great perspective for those who want to focus on quality over quantity in their lives.

Overall the book has a common sense approach for productivity: pick a limited number of items to focus on, then keep your missions/projects/tasks limited to those items to get more done. The second half may have been more interesting, I didn't make it that far and moved on to a new read. Part of the issue, in my opinion, is the length of some sections/chapters of the book that seem to blend multiple thoughts and approaches that span different aspects of maintaining focus, eliminating 'noise', how to say no, etc. In the end the concepts and actions became a blur that just didn't resonate.

Not at all what I expected, way better. A slow journey that fills in the reasons in just the right order.

I am compelled by the idea of this book yet becoming wary of practicing it. In a world where competition everywhere, the slow productivity mindset works when everyone or at least most people are thinking the same way. But all in all a well written book

I’m a software engineer, I found this super encouraging, highly recommend