Slow Productivity
Issue 220: Reflections on the new Cal Newport book
There are a handful of authors I can think of who've made a transformative impact in how I approach the professional craft, and that's Cal Newport, the Computer Scientist professor at Georgetown who wrote titles such as, So good they can't ignore you, and Deep Work.
In a conversation with James Hunter, Lead Designer on the AI team at Atlassian, he mentioned Newport's new book to me—Slow Productivity. The industry is moving overwhelmingly fast. As the famous Lenin quote goes, "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." Every person I talk to working in AI feels the nonstop pace you'd expect in Mad Max: Fury Road. It's mental. How does one do their best work when everything is changing in front of you? Is it possible to stay focused on shipping our own work while it seemingly feels each day there is a new product, feature release, or AI breakthrough?
In a time of things moving so fast, it's more important than ever to be intentional. I believe it's possible to move fast while being sustainable; the real promise of Agile that people often misunderstand or mispractice. I finished the book on a 16-hour flight on my way from San Francisco to Bangalore. Fittingly enough, the flight invoked a session of Deep Work to take notes and write this post. This isn't a book review. It's my notes and reflections, though I do give away key premises of the book. I'm not sure if people are as sensitive to spoilers about books as they are to movies. In any case, you've been warned with spoilers(?).
Reflections on Slow Productivity
You may be familiar with the phrase bending the universe to your will. What if we took that approach and applied it to time? Bend time to your will is the theme I took from Slow Productivity. The concept is not simply taking longer to do things—a huge disappointment to fellow procrastinators. Slow Productivity challenges you to pick the vital aspects you care most about in your professional (and personal) life to give it the time it deserves to bloom into something great.
Newport's new book is encapsulated by three principles: Do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.
1) Do fewer things
My rule of thumb is principles that sound like a no-brainer or obvious are the most difficult to achieve. We've all experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed by all the work we need to do and falling in the busyness trap. The truth is much of it can be avoided by saying "no" and showing what you're saying "yes" to.
Promoting visibility promotes a healthy way to do fewer things. It gives you focus while keeping your teammates in the loop of why you aren't working on other things. At work, I share a Trello board with my direct report managers so they know where I am spending my time.
Slow Productivity encourages breaking the work down into overarching goals, ongoing projects, and daily tasks. It's important to remember not turning the creation of tasks and issues as what you do for work, but it as a means to get the work done. As a colleague once said to me, "Creating more tickets in your backlog is like trying to save a failing economy by printing more money."
There is a concept in the book called one big target, which encourages you to ensure there is a major focus you achieve in a day. Even as a manager, I set one big target to get done so I'm not firefighting. An example of this might be needing to align on headcount planning for the quarter with a list of people I need to gain alignment with. Newport also suggests doubling the timeline and doubling the check-ins to give the right buffer to get high-quality work done.
"Slow Productivity requires that you free yourself from the constraints of the small so that you can invest in more meaningful in the big."
My ideas to do fewer things
Minimizing Slack use for communications, updates, and check-ins in place of documents and Loom videos to get feedback/debate
Set a Kanban board to visualize my flow of work for myself and others
Avoid defaulting to meetings to get work done and do more 15-minute meetings (you'd be surprised how much you can achieve in that amount of time)
2) Work at a natural pace
For the second principle, Newport tells the story of Ian Fleming going to his estate, properly named Golden Eye. Due to an administrative mistake, Fleming's job after the war gave him reduced time so he could work on his first novel, "Casino Royale" featuring a character named James Bond.
As much as we'd like, not everyone can fly to the Caribbean every year to write a novel, so Newport introduces the concept of small seasonality. The concept encourages you to explore different paces for the type of work you need to get done. For example, when I explore different talks I want to give for the year, I do it all in one session of small seasonality. I don't have pockets of time to think deep daily. However, once I have my drafts it allows me to edit daily and workshop the talks. Different tasks require different paces.
It takes time to understand your natural place. Everyone has different ways to be effective. I've had designers who are digital natives and easily multi-task throughout the day to get their work done. Another designer seemed to always go missing after sprint planning but after a few days of focus time she came back with a high volume of great work.
"Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performance rewards of unwavering urgency."
My ideas to to work at a natural pace
Keep my Future Friday ritual of blocking out a few hours to do forward-thinking work
Leverage our house in Palm Springs to embrace a rhythm of small seasonality when not in San Francisco
Unleash the slow and intentional work into a weekly sprint of productivity
3. Obsess over quality
In the third principle, Newport shares the story of musician Jewel. The story made me realize quality is not about spending time to do one thing well. It can also mean to say "no" or create the right environment to do the next thing well. The famed musician received an upfront contract of $1m from a record label, which she said "no" to. The book describes the unfavorable terms if she did. Instead, she launched her album, "Pieces of You," which was not well received. Because her contract was so cheap, the record label didn't drop her. Soon after, Jewel released "You Were Meant for Me" which launched her career.
I was pleasantly surprised about this principle. The natural assumption about quality is spending more time on the current work. Newport reminds us to think of the long game in our craft as much larger iterations. Obsessing over quality also means accepting the right terms to do high-quality work. To achieve quality, it requires iterations of multiple projects over your professional career, not in one feature you design or build.
Obsessing over the quality of what you produce, even if it means missing opportunities in the short team"
My ideas to obsess over quality
Focus on building in private to let ideas percolate without public pressures
Give a talk on a topic I care deeply about no more than one per year
Continue coding and designing with AI to be close to the work as a manager
Recap
Key themes from my perspective:
Slow Productivity isn't about taking more time to increase intention, not simply taking more time
Sharing the visibility of your work and how you're breaking it down helps other people understand how to support you in the time spent
Improving quality in your craft takes multiple roles in your career, not only in a project
Reflection questions I seek to answer:
What are your most important professional goals that deserve slowness?
What does your five-year plan look like? (not to have a rigid roadmap, but signals of where you need to be)
What are ways you can implement small seasonality?
If you've read Slow Productivity, please share your thoughts on what stood out. I hope this gives you ideas on how to bend time to your will.
Hyperlinks + notes
A collection of references for this post, updates, and weekly reads.
How It Went | A beautiful post by John Gruber
Slay Your Dragons (But Keep the Fire) by
42 Pages by Nate Parrot
Intrigued by your Future Friday ritual—sounds like a great habit to carve out dedicated time and space every week for thinking forward.