One of my all-time favorite authors, Cal Newport, recently wrote about a concept called slow productivity. He basically argues that our idea of productivity needs an alternate definition and went ahead to create one.
Our current idea of productivity is to get more stuff done, and in the pursuit of doing so, we end up overworking and then feeling burnt out. While we may have theoretically ‘checked off’ all the items on our to-do list, in the process, we are exhausted and probably burned out. It’s quite an ironic proposition that way.
This is where Cal introduces the concept of slow productivity - The central goal of slow productivity is to keep an individual worker’s volume at a sustainable level.
In this New Yorker article, Cal goes into the details of this topic. He provides the context and explains why it is important to change our time horizon for success and reduce the amount of work each employee tackles at any given point in time.
An eye-opening article for sure.
Do the work - The best productivity advice.
Sometimes, the best advice is wrapped into the most obvious solutions.
This article dives into the most commonly overlooked issue of ‘getting bored at repetitive work’ to offer solutions to our productivity problems.
Here is how he starts his article with.
Do the work.
That's all the productivity advice you need and the only useful productivity advice you're ever going to get. You can direct your attention to a million optimizations— email, meetings, notes, calendar, time tracking, goals, to-do lists, time estimates, prioritization frameworks, quantified self sensors, analytics, apps, documents, and journaling. But don't. Ignore all this, and do the work. When you do the work, everything else optimizes itself.
Have a focused week ahead. See you next Sunday!