# Slow Productivity  Author:: Cal Newport ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > It couldn’t have existed, however, without McPhee’s willingness to put everything else on hold, and just lie on his back, gazing upward toward the sky, thinking hard about how to create something wonderful. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=93)) > A commenter on my blog added, “The productivity terminology encodes not only getting things done, but doing them at all costs.” ([Location 101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=101)) > “We are overworked and overstressed, constantly dissatisfied, and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher,” writes Celeste Headlee in the introduction to Do Nothing. A few years earlier, this sentiment might have seemed provocative. By the time the pandemic peaked, however, she was preaching to the choir. ([Location 114](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=114)) > The relentless overload that’s wearing us down is generated by a belief that “good” work requires increasing busyness—faster responses to email and chats, more meetings, more tasks, more hours. But when we look closer at this premise, we fail to find a firm foundation. I came to believe that alternative approaches to productivity can be just as easily justified, including those in which overfilled task lists and constant activity are downgraded in importance, and something like John McPhee’s languid intentionality is lauded. ([Location 144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=144)) > SLOW PRODUCTIVITY ([Location 152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=152)) > A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles: 1. Do fewer things. 2. Work at a natural pace. 3. Obsess over quality. ([Location 153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=153)) > 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. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=157)) > I want to rescue knowledge work from its increasingly untenable freneticism and rebuild it into something more sustainable and humane, enabling you to create things you’re proud of without requiring you to grind yourself down along the way. ([Location 165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=165)) ### 1 THE RISE AND FALL OF PSEUDO-PRODUCTIVITY > It was from this uncertainty that a simple alternative emerged: using visible activity as a crude proxy for actual productivity. ([Location 270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=270)) > In the absence of more sophisticated measures of effectiveness, we also gravitate away from deeper efforts toward shallower, more concrete tasks that can be more easily checked off a to-do list. ([Location 278](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=278)) > This switch from concrete productivity to this looser proxy heuristic is so important for our discussion to follow that we should give it a formal name and definition: PSEUDO-PRODUCTIVITY The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort. ([Location 283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=283)) > In a setting where activity provides a proxy for productivity, the introduction of tools like email (and, later, Slack) that make it possible to visibly signal your busyness with minimal effort inevitably led to more and more of the average knowledge worker’s day being dedicated to talking about work, as fast and frantically as possible, through incessant electronic messaging. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=299)) > Slow Food. Slow Cities. Slow Medicine. Slow Schooling. Slow Media. Slow Cinema. All movements built on the radical but effective strategy of offering people a slower, more sustainable alternative to modern busyness that draws from time-tested wisdom. As I learned more about these ideas in my reporting on knowledge work, a natural follow-up thought emerged: maybe when it comes to combating the inhumanity of our current moment of professional overload, what we really need—more so than righteous disdain or brash new policy—is a slower conception of what it even means to be productive in the first place. ([Location 437](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=437)) > KNOWLEDGE WORK (GENERAL DEFINITION) The economic activity in which knowledge is transformed into an artifact with market value through the application of cognitive effort. ([Location 473](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=473)) ### 3 DO FEWER THINGS > PRINCIPLE #1: DO FEWER THINGS Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most. ([Location 627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=627)) > The advantage of doing fewer things, however, is about more than just increasing the raw number of hours dedicated to useful activity; the quality of these hours also increases. ([Location 702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=702)) > We’ve now refuted a common confusion about the first principle of slow productivity: it’s easy to mistake “do fewer things” as a request to “accomplish fewer things.” But this understanding gets things exactly backward. Whether your task list is overflowing or sparse, you’re still working more or less the same number of hours each week. The size of your list affects only how usefully these hours produce results. ([Location 709](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=709)) > Focusing intensely on a small number of tasks, waiting to finish each before bringing on something new, is objectively a much better way to use our brains to produce valuable output. ([Location 715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=715)) > In knowledge work, by contrast, pushing employees into larger workloads can decrease both the quantity and quality of what they produce. ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=736)) > It is the acceptance of this fundamentally uncontrolled nature of knowledge work that provides a solution to our mystery: self-regulation. ([Location 738](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=738)) > In the modern office context, they tend to rely on stress as a default heuristic for moderation. ([Location 740](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=740)) > This is why so many knowledge workers feel vaguely overloaded all the time, and why we were so vulnerable to collapsing into full burnout when pushed by unexpected disruptions: the informal manner in which we manage our workloads ensures we always have dangerously too much to do. ([Location 747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=747)) > overload is not fundamental to knowledge work. It’s instead largely a side effect of the crude ways in which we self-manage our work volume. ([Location 773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=773)) > Proposition: Limit the Big ([Location 782](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=782)) > To buy time to work on Fermat’s theorem, he decided to instead break up this nearly complete work into smaller pieces, publishing one short paper every six months or so. “This apparent productivity would convince his colleagues that he was still continuing with his usual research,” explains Singh. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=807)) > LIMIT MISSIONS The term mission can sound grandiose. For our purposes, we’ll demote it to a more pragmatic definition: any ongoing goal or service that directs your professional life. ([Location 831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=831)) > A crude approach to accomplishing this goal is to adopt the persona of someone who is eccentric and unresponsive, eventually driving your colleagues to redirect their requests and assignments elsewhere. ([Location 859](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=859)) > If you instead have a reputation as someone who is careful about managing their time and can quantify your busyness more concretely, you have a better chance of avoiding the new work. When you say, “I don’t see any really significant swaths of open time to work on something like this for at least three weeks, and in the meantime, I have five other projects competing for my schedule,” it’s hard for someone to rebut you, unless they’re willing to challenge your calculations, or demand that you expand your working hours to accommodate their specific request. ([Location 881](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=881)) > To gain this credibility, I recommend, at first, when considering a new project, you estimate how much time it will require and then go find that time and schedule it on your calendar. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=885)) > LIMIT DAILY GOALS ([Location 901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=901)) > when it comes to expending efforts on important, bigger initiatives, stay focused on just one target per day. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=905)) > Proposition: Contain the Small ([Location 915](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=915)) > dismissed. Small tasks, in sufficient quantity, can act like productivity termites, destabilizing the whole foundation of what you’re trying to build. It’s worth going to great lengths to tame them. ([Location 984](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=984)) > PUT TASKS ON AUTOPILOT ([Location 1001](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1001)) > “Once you get to the point where your regular work is getting done with minimum of thinking,” I wrote in one of my early articles on this topic, “you’ve hit that low-stress sweet spot where you can start turning your attention to the bigger things.” ([Location 1008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1008)) > A key refinement to support this task-centric version of autopilot scheduling is to leverage rituals and locations. If you can connect a regularly recurring task block to a specific location, perhaps paired with a little ritual that helps initiate your efforts, you’re more likely to fall into a regular rhythm of accomplishing this work. ([Location 1016](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1016)) > Containing tasks is not about escaping the small. It’s instead about making these efforts as painless as possible. Seeking, as I once put it, that “low-stress sweet spot.” ([Location 1026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1026)) > SYNCHRONIZE ([Location 1027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1027)) > But systems like GTD, though helpful, were not able to really solve the issues of anxious overload that began to afflict knowledge workers like Mann in recent decades. The mismatch can be found in GTD’s focus on stand-alone tasks. ([Location 1045](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1045)) > David Allen’s carefully organized lists don’t help the project manager who must reply to dozens of emails an hour. ([Location 1055](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1055)) > In other words, if you can reduce the footprint of these conversations, the pile of actual, concrete obligations that remains might not be so forbidding. ([Location 1058](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1058)) > A direct strategy for reducing collaboration overhead is to replace asynchronous communication with real-time conversations. ([Location 1059](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1059)) > The right balance can be found in using office hours: regularly scheduled sessions for quick discussions that can be used to resolve many different issues. Set aside the same thirty to sixty minutes every afternoon, and advertise this time to your colleagues and clients. Make it clear that you’re always available during this period—your door is open, Zoom activated, Slack channels monitored, phone on—to chat about any and all relevant questions or requests. ([Location 1065](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1065)) > MAKE OTHER PEOPLE WORK MORE ([Location 1081](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1081)) > Consider, for example, a more palatable version of my New Yorker suggestion that I call the reverse task list. It works as follows: Create a public task list for each of the major categories of tasks you tackle in your job. You can use a shared document for this purpose. (If you’re feeling more advanced, a shared Trello board is perhaps even better.) When someone asks you to take on some small obligation, direct them to add it themselves to the relevant shared task list; writing it, for example, into the shared doc, or creating a new card for it on the shared Trello board. Critically, make it clear that all of the information you’ll need to complete the task should be included in their entry. Reverse task lists require people to spend more time specifying exactly what they need from you, which simplifies the later execution of their requests. You can also use these public lists to keep people updated on the status of the tasks you’re currently handling, saving them from having to bother you with “How’s it going?” messages. Finally, these lists clearly communicate your current workload. If a colleague encounters an overstuffed reverse task list, they might think twice about giving you something new to do. ([Location 1097](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1097)) > AVOID TASK ENGINES ([Location 1125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1125)) > When selecting new projects, assess your options by the number of weekly requests, questions, or small chores you expect the project to generate. Prioritize options that minimize this number. Most people focus on the difficulty of a project, or the total amount of time it might require. But once you understand the havoc wreaked by an overstuffed to-do list, it makes sense that the task footprint of a project should be taken just as seriously. ([Location 1128](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1128)) > SPEND MONEY ([Location 1145](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1145)) > Every effective entrepreneur I know shares a similar commitment to paying people who know what they’re doing so they don’t have to do the work, at a lower level of quality, all by themselves. ([Location 1165](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1165)) > Proposition: Pull Instead of Push ([Location 1211](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1211)) > In a push-based process, each stage pushes work onward to the next as soon as it’s done. In a pull-based process, by contrast, each stage pulls in new work only when it’s ready for it. ([Location 1230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1230)) > Shifting to a pull-based operation made backlogs impossible: the pace of the pipeline would adapt to whatever stage was running slowest. This transparency, in turn, helped the workers identify places where the system was out of balance. ([Location 1234](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1234)) > SIMULATED PULL, PART 1: HOLDING TANK AND ACTIVE LISTS ([Location 1279](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1279)) > There is no bound to the size of your holding tank. The active position of the list, by contrast, should be limited to three projects at most. When scheduling your time, you should focus your attention only on the projects on your active list. When you complete one of these projects, you can remove it from your list. This leaves open a free slot that you can fill by pulling in a new project from the holding tank. ([Location 1285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1285)) > SIMULATED PULL, PART 2: INTAKE PROCEDURE ([Location 1297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1297)) > When adding a new project to your holding tank, it’s important to update the source of this new obligation about what they should expect. To do so, send an acknowledgment message that formally acknowledges the project that you’re committing to complete, but that also includes the following three pieces of extra information: (1) a request for any additional details you need from the source before you can start the project, (2) a count of the number of existing projects already on your lists, and (3) an estimate of when you expect to complete this new work. ([Location 1297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1297)) > SIMULATED PULL, PART 3: LIST CLEANING ([Location 1321](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1321)) ### 4 WORK AT A NATURAL PACE > The great scientists of past eras would have found our urgency to be self-defeating and frantic. They were interested in what they produced over the course of their lifetimes, not in any particular short-term stretch. ([Location 1373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1373)) ## New highlights added March 12, 2024 at 6:41 PM > Working with unceasing intensity is artificial and unsustainable. In the moment, it might exude a false sense of usefulness, but when continued over time, it estranges us from our fundamental nature, generates misery, and, from a strictly economic perspective, almost certainly holds us back from reaching our full capabilities. A more natural, slower, varied pace to work is the foundation of true productivity in the long term. ([Location 1505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1505)) #### Proposition: Take Longer > The rapid feedback loop created by these repeated mini-performances helped Miranda find his signature musical voice. ([Location 1530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1530)) > The second principle of slow productivity asks that you approach your work with a more natural pace. This proposition offers the first of three ideas for how to achieve this goal: follow Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lead and become comfortable taking longer on important projects. This request, of course, is fraught. The boundary between Miranda’s slow but steady creative production and straight-up procrastination is worrisomely narrow. There’s a reason why the frenetic speed of National Novel Writing Month is so popular—many people don’t trust themselves to keep returning to a hard project once their initial ardor dissipates. ([Location 1558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1558)) > MAKE A FIVE-YEAR PLAN ([Location 1564](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1564)) > DOUBLE YOUR PROJECT TIMELINES ([Location 1588](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1588)) > SIMPLIFY YOUR WORKDAY ([Location 1606](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1606)) > To create more reasonable workdays, I have two suggestions: first, reduce the number of tasks you schedule, and second, reduce the number of appointments on your calendar. ([Location 1610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1610)) > FORGIVE YOURSELF ([Location 1634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1634)) #### Proposition: Embrace Seasonality > This seasonal approach to work, in which you vary the intensity and focus of your efforts throughout the year, ([Location 1675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1675)) > SCHEDULE SLOW SEASONS ([Location 1691](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1691)) > If we’re willing to push aside all of this digital posturing, at the core of quiet quitting is a pragmatic observation: you have more control than you think over the intensity of your workload. ([Location 1711](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1711)) > What if we stopped positioning quiet quitting as a general response to the “meaninglessness of work,” and instead saw it as a more specific tactic to achieve seasonality? What if, for example, you decided to quiet quit a single season each year: maybe July and August, or that distracted period between Thanksgiving and the New Year? You wouldn’t make a big deal about this decision. You would just, for lack of a better word, quietly implement it before returning without fanfare to a more normal pace. ([Location 1715](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1715)) > DEFINE A SHORTER WORK YEAR ([Location 1731](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1731)) > IMPLEMENT “SMALL SEASONALITY” ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1784)) > No Meeting Mondays Don’t schedule appointments on Mondays. ([Location 1790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1790)) > The benefit to you, however, is significant, because it allows a more gradual transition from the weekend back into the week. Sunday nights become less onerous when the calendar for your next day is gloriously uncluttered. This reduced distraction also provides a consistent block of time each week to support progress on the types of hard but important projects that make your work more meaningful. ([Location 1793](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1793)) > See a Matinee Once a Month ([Location 1799](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1799)) > Schedule Rest Projects ([Location 1811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1811)) > A clever way to balance this stress is to pair each major work project with a corresponding rest project. The idea is simple: after putting aside time on your calendar for a major work project, schedule in the days or weeks immediately following it time to pursue something leisurely and unrelated to your work. ([Location 1814](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1814)) > Work in Cycles ([Location 1821](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1821)) > sometimes a natural pace is too slow. ([Location 1854](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1854)) #### Proposition: Work Poetically > sometimes cultivating a natural pace isn’t just about the time you dedicate to a project, but also the context in which the work is completed. As the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard argues in The Poetics of Space, we shouldn’t underestimate the ability of our surroundings to transform our cognitive reality. ([Location 1878](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1878)) > MATCH YOUR SPACE TO YOUR WORK ([Location 1890](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1890)) > STRANGE IS BETTER THAN STYLISH ([Location 1913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1913)) > Strange is powerful, even if it’s ugly. When seeking out where you work, be wary of the overly familiar. ([Location 1954](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1954)) > RITUALS SHOULD BE STRIKING ([Location 1955](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1955)) > My advice here has two parts. 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 shift your mental state into something more supportive of your goals. The second principle of productivity asks that you work at a more natural pace. It’s suitable that this suggestion about rituals closes this chapter, as there are few strategies that will more effectively transform your perception of time, pushing your experience away from anxiety and toward the more sublimely natural, than to add a dash of poetic mystery to your efforts. ([Location 1992](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=1992)) ### 5 OBSESS OVER QUALITY > PRINCIPLE #3: OBSESS OVER QUALITY Obsess over the quality of what you produce, even if this means missing opportunities in the short term. Leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term. ([Location 2101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2101)) > Doing fewer things and working at a natural pace are both absolutely necessary components of this philosophy, but if those earlier principles are implemented on their own, without an accompanying obsession with quality, they might serve only to fray your relationship to work over time—casting your professional efforts as an imposition that you must tame. It’s in the obsession over what you’re producing that slowness can transcend its role as just one more strategy on the arid battlegrounds of work-life wars and become a necessary imperative—an engine that drives a meaningful professional life. ([Location 2108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2108)) > fields: obsessing over quality often demands that you slow down, as the focus required to get better is simply not compatible with busyness. ([Location 2134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2134)) > This third principle’s focus on quality, however, transforms professional simplicity from an option to an imperative. Once you commit to doing something very well, busyness becomes intolerable. In other words, this third principle helps you stick with the first. ([Location 2157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2157)) > I first encountered Jarvis when his editor sent me a copy of his 2019 book, Company of One. I was taken by the boldness of its premise: don’t scale your business. If you’re fortunate enough for your entrepreneurial endeavors to begin to succeed, he argues, leverage this success to gain more freedom instead of more revenue. ([Location 2175](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2175)) > The marketplace doesn’t care about your personal interest in slowing down. If you want more control over your schedule, you need something to offer in return. More often than not, your best source of leverage will be your own abilities. ([Location 2209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2209)) #### Proposition: Improve Your Taste > Your taste can guide you toward the best work you’re capable of producing at the moment, but it can also fuel a sense of disappointment in your final result. Glass argues that it’s in our desire to squelch this uneasy self-appraisal—to diminish the distance between our taste and our ability—that improvement happens. His exhortation to those just beginning their careers is to keep putting in the work, as it’s only through this deliberate effort that the gap will close. ([Location 2244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2244)) > BECOME A CINEPHILE ([Location 2270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2270)) > The bigger observation is that there can be utility in immersing yourself in appreciation for fields that are different from your own. ([Location 2299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2299)) > START YOUR OWN INKLINGS ([Location 2308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2308)) > When you gather with other people who share similar professional ambitions, the collective taste of the group can be superior to that of any individual. This follows, in part, from the diversity of approaches that people take toward creation in a given field. When you combine the opinions of multiple practitioners of your craft, more possibilities and nuance emerge. There’s also a focusing effect that comes from performing for a crowd. When you want to impress other people, or add to the conversations in a meaningful way, your mind slips into a higher gear than what’s easily accessible in solo introspection. Forming a group of like-minded professionals, all looking to improve what they’re doing, provides a shortcut to improving your taste, an instantaneous upgrade to the standard of quality that you’re pursuing. BUY A FIFTY-DOLLAR NOTEBOOK ([Location 2323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2323)) > quality tools can increase the quality of your work ([Location 2352](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2352)) > In most cases, their audience wouldn’t care about the minor quality difference between that professional mic and a cheaper USB option, but to the aspiring podcaster, it’s a signal to themselves that they’re taking the pursuit seriously. We also see these dynamics at play when computer programmers set up elaborate digital workstations featuring two or three monitors. These programmers will swear that the ability to see multiple windows at once increases productivity. ([Location 2356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2356)) > Here we find as good a general strategy for balancing obsession and perfectionism as I’ve seen: Give yourself enough time to produce something great, but not unlimited time. Focus on creating something good enough to catch the attention of those whose taste you care about, but relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece. Progress is what matters. Not perfection. ([Location 2432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2432)) #### Proposition: Bet on Yourself > that betting on yourself in this manner—with nontrivial stakes for failure but attractive rewards for success—is a good general strategy for pushing the quality of your work to a new level. ([Location 2468](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2468)) > WRITE AFTER THE KIDS GO TO BED ([Location 2479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2479)) > These authors demonstrate one of the more approachable strategies for betting on yourself: temporarily dedicating significant amounts of free time to the project in question. The stakes here are modest: If you fail to reach the quality level that you seek, the main consequence is that during a limited period you’ve lost time you could have dedicated to more rewarding (or restful) activities. But this cost is sufficiently annoying to motivate increased attention toward your efforts. ([Location 2505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2505)) > This spare time strategy, of course, is not a sustainable way to work in the long term. Sacrificing too many of your leisure hours to extra work can violate both of the first two principles of slow productivity. But when deployed in moderation, dedicated to a specific project for a temporary period, this act of giving up something meaningful in pursuit of higher quality can become an effective bet on yourself. ([Location 2513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2513)) > REDUCE YOUR SALARY ([Location 2518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2518)) > Committing your free time to a project is one of the easier ways to bet on yourself. A more drastic option is to rely on the project for income. Few forces induce more focus than the need to pay bills. ([Location 2518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2518)) > Don’t haphazardly quit your job to pursue a more meaningful project. Wait instead to make a major change until you have concrete evidence that your new interest satisfies the following two properties: first, people are willing to give you money for it, and second, you can replicate the result. ([Location 2539](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2539)) > ANNOUNCE A SCHEDULE ([Location 2548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2548)) > ATTRACT AN INVESTOR ([Location 2561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2561)) > When someone has invested in your project, you’ll experience amplified motivation to pay back their trust. This is true for investments of financial capital, as with Carpenter and Akkad. But it’s also true for investments of sweat equity, such as when a friend helps you build the sets for a theatrical production or spends an afternoon stuffing envelopes for a marketing campaign for your new business. Attracting other people to invest in you and your idea is a dramatic bet on yourself and your ability to not let others down. In the drive to avoid this disappointment, greatness can be found. ([Location 2583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2583)) ### CONCLUSION > What’s needed is more intentional thinking about what we mean by “productivity” in the knowledge sector—seeking ideas that start from the premise that these efforts must be sustainable and engaging for the actual humans doing the work. Slow productivity is one example of this thinking, but it shouldn’t be the only one. My long-term wish is that this movement kicks off many others, creating a marketplace of different concepts of productivity, each of which might apply to different types of workers or sensibilities. Slow productivity, for example, is designed to be actionable, providing ideas that individuals can implement immediately. But it would be good to balance this approach with some that more ambitiously seek to rework how organizations are managed, or even the legislation that constrains how our market economy operates. Revolution requires rebellions of many different scopes, from the practical and immediate to the fiery and ideological. ([Location 2644](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2644)) > Slow productivity, more than anything else, is a plea to step back from the frenzied activity of the daily grind. ([Location 2661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C7716FW1&location=2661))