Slow Productivity
The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
by Cal Newport · first published 2024
67% recommend33% neutral
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. I
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Cal Newport has a new book about this, Slow Productivity, worth reading if one is interested in more on this topic
on “The Virtue of Slow Writers” ↗Slow productivity by Cal Newport helped me reframe work and my boundaries with it when I was on the edge of burn out.
on “Tell HN: Burnout is bad to your brain, take care” ↗…pounds, and been doing a lot of hiking, sports, salsa, which is great, but it's not enough. Finally I understand why rich people seldom retire. I'm reasonably productive (big fan of Cal Newport, Deep Work, Slow Productivity). The dream is to have a profitable SaaS but it's been overwhelming to see the amount of stuff out there. My strengths are FE and I can handle design and marketing reasonably okay. Don't want to brag…
on “Ask HN: I'm a software developer with 3 years of runway. What do I build?” ↗Nice post! This rhymes with the ideas Cal Newport presents in Slow Productivity.
on “Slow” ↗…making progress in leaps is often mutually exclusive with being productive in the short term. It’s hard to think big and plan long-term when you’re constantly overwhelmed with what’s in front of you. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport talks about this trade-off extensively and provides interesting points of reference where real famous historical figures achieved incredible things in ways that would seem slow and lazy…
on “Let's stop pretending that managers and executives care about productivity” ↗I built Space after realizing most productivity tools focus on doing whatever, not doing better. After reading Oliver Burkeman's "4000 Weeks" and Cal Newport's "Slow Productivity," I wanted a tool that actually supported their ideas rather than undermined them. Something that helps you zoom out (year/quarter goals) so you can zoom in (week/day) with confidence that today's work…
on “I built a 4000 Weeks/Slow Productivity-inspired tool (yes I see the irony)” ↗…all "influencers" online…in fact you should probably just spend the bulk of your waking hours offline entirely. Cal Newport has been one of the leading voices of this corrective movement (Deep Work, Slow Productivity, etc.), and I pray to the gods above that Gen Z rightly rejects so much of this hustle porn that Millennials came up with in the first two decades of this century. Slow dooowwwnnnn. Focus on real-world…
on “Confessions of a Millennial in Tech” ↗…push-on-green-build. I just miss how distilled Trac was, but it had some problems with plugins and git support. That sat on the Some Day Shelf behind two other projects until I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work, and then Slow Productivity. Then it became more user oriented. Atlassian has about three per-user dashboards that I’m responsible for juggling all day, and that is tragicomically stupid. I’m terrible with this sort of juggling…
on “A change of heart regarding employee metrics” ↗…Baader-Meinhof, but this is a theme that seems to be coming up more and more. James Clear's Atomic Habits book is built on the idea and Cal Newport (Deep Work) has been writing about it[1] under the name of slow productivity. I think many of us would be better off if we took a longer term view of ourselves. [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/its-time-to-e...
on “Celebrate tiny learning milestones” ↗spot on - isolation is definitely not the best thing here if we want to build software that actually solves business problems. Blocks maybe is a good way to, been reading slow productivity by Cal Newport, seems interesting per say, especially his example of John McAfee right at the start. Even though he is a writer but the stress upon having blocks to do deep thinking/problem solving are…
on “Ask HN: Developers should have 0 meetings and focus on slow productivity?” ↗Reminds me a lot of Cal Newport's ideas re: Slow Productivity. He talks a lot about how Context shifts are death for knowledge work and that a lot of offices operate via a "hyper active hive mind" that doesn't allow or value deep work.
on “Use a work journal” ↗This aligns well with Cal Newport's Slow Productivity. Which reminds me, I need to read it during xmas break
on “Slowness is a virtue” ↗