Slow Productivity (Carl Newport)

 

I was not enamored with this book initially.

p. 8 ...this philosophy rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride. It also posits that professional efforts should unfold at a more varied and humane pace, with hard periods counterbalanced by relaxation at many different timescales, and that a focus on impressive quality, not performative activity, should underpin everything.

My inner voice said, "Sounds easy coming from a man. What about women who are managing many different jobs, people and projects? Have you seen what life is like for a teacher?! Sure. I'd like this idea...but the very structure of education does not provide for this idea."

But then there was this:

He talked about a city in Italy that did not want a McDonald's restaurant. A new movement started against fast food called Slow Food. 

p. 32 In 1986, McDonald's announced a plan to open a massive new restaurant, with seating for over 450 people, at the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, near the base of the Spanish Steps. Many Italians weren't pleased. Cty council members tried to block the opening, while the fashion designer Valentino, who maintained a studio in the area, argued that the smell of hamburgers would sully his coture outfirs. "What disturbs us most is the americanization of our life." decried the film director Luciano De Crescenzo. ...It was amid this unrest that a seasoned activitist and journalist named Carlo Petrini launched a new movement that he called Slow Food. 

p. 34 As the journalist Carl Honore documents in his 2004 book, In Praise of Slowness, these second-wave movements include Slow cities, which also started in Italy (where it's called Cittaslow), and focuses on making cities more pedestrian-centric, supportive of localbusiness, and in a general sense, more neighborly. They also includ Slow Medicine, which promotes the holistic care of people as opposed to focusing on ly on disease, and Slow Schooling, which attempts to freelementary school students from the pressures of high-stakes testing and ocmpetitive tracking. More recently, the Slow Media movement has emerged to promose more sustained and higher-quality alternatives to digital clickbait, and the term Slow Cinema is increasily used ot describe realistic, largely non narrative movies that reward extended atttention with deeper insight into human condition. "The slow movement was f irst seen as an idea for a few people who liked to eat and drink well," explained the mayor of Petrini's homtown of Bra. "But now ithas become a much broader cltural discussion about the benefits of doing things in a more human, less frenetic manner.

His tiny footnote on p. 82 though helped: ...for a sobering critical take on the specific circumstances and privileges required or support Benjamin Franklin's rise, I recommend Jill Lepore's 2013 National Book Awards Finalist, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. Lepore details how Benjamin Franklin's sister Jane shared a similar intelligence and ambition to her famous brother, but, due to the demands on women of that class in that time (Jan raised twelve children!) had no viable outlet for her talents.

I started to read about having rituals, narrowing our focus and some of the topics really leaned well into his ideas of deep work.

p. 163 First, form your own personalized rituals around the work you find most important. Second, in doing so, ensure your rituals are sufficiently striking to effectively shirt your mental state into something more supportive of your goals. 

In the end, I was sold on the concept. 

Goodreads says:

Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload.

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers—from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe—Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for workers to replace them with a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.