Ha, thanks Kat! I love Murakami, and I find his routines interesting, but I just did not find almost anything in that book about running to be particularly insightful, or even interestingly framed. That said, I've noticed some of my favorite writers tend to have high variance in their output, and I think that speaks to their willingness to try new things.
Provocative article and interview. A missing piece is that knowledge is completely dependent on trust and is profoundly social. Most knowledge workers today are still managed with limited autonomy and traditional managers demand control to minimize risks and stay in charge. (I need to see this before it goes out to prevent mistakes.)
Until leadership is comfortable with worker trust centralized decisions become the norm, more meetings become a measure of performance, and talented people end up wasting time waiting for approvals instead of being productive. Management control is the biggest challenge to productivity, well being, innovation, and learning. No one likes giving up power. Knowledge workers, smart people, and deep talent requires autonomy to decide and that is rare except on the best teams and organizations.
Hey Ed, thanks so much for this. I know sometimes readers peruse these comments, so just want to note for anyone who gets here in the comments: Ed was NASA's first Chief Knowledge Officer. So definitely read his comments.
Ed, you also reminded me a bit of when I was interviewing Ed Catmull a while back, and he mentioned that leaders often react badly to getting surprised in a meeting, and so they try to micromanage the flow of information before the meeting. But he said he wants to be surprised in a meeting, because if he already knows everything in the meeting, there's no need for the meeting.
Thanks, David. That's an excellent and smart consideration from Catmull. No surprise as his book on Pixar (Creativity, Inc) is an excellent case example on what it takes to create and sustain a culture of creativity and knowledge.
There is a significant challenge that while the future of work is happening now (technology, demographics, gig work, deep knowledge growing) the profession of management is still based on concepts from 30 years ago. Too many managers think they must achieve control over the workforce.
A great interview -- I've been spending more time honoring seasonality in my life and work, which was inspired by Katherine May's "Wintering." Looking forward to Cal's book, thanks for this conversation (and inspiration!).
I love the idea of doing this intentionally. I've noticed the impact of the seasons on my body but likely judged myself too harshly. I've realised I need to pace myself differently with the seasons in all their forms
My "aha" moment around seasonality came through a coach I was working with who challenged me to think about the summer as a period of taking in more content than I was creating. The idea of receiving more than generating helped to to loosen my grip and minimize judgement - so I've tried to integrate this mindset into my larger life and work.
Ah wow love that idea Suzanne. Moving with the ebb and flow of what we consume vs what we create is a great way to see it. Thanks for sharing - that's definitely got me pondering
Agree, Sabrina, there are so many diverse rhythms to life. Women often struggle to adapt to the modern work world because it's built for the male 24-hour cycle when instead it's more relevant to schedule activities according to different phases of their monthly cycle — planning and initiating projects in the follicular phase and focusing and completing in the luteal phase, for example (Kate Northrup talks about this on her podcast).
Excellent interview and article. A missing component is that knowledge workers (smart people with deep expertise) often lack the autonomy to make decisions. Management desire for control often leads to the most knowledgeable people not driving the decisions.
We are living in the age of knowledge work, but management is still traditional and tends towards control. Knowledge is profoundly social and requires heavy doses of autonomy.
Thanks David and Cal, looking forward to reading the book. I wonder if we’re reaching a peak of ‘connectedness’, where knowledge workers can’t actually fit any more in and it’s now decreasing the quality of the output in terms of work performance and also health. I’d love to see a ‘slow productivity’ movement, or at least a sense of leaders role-modelling the behaviours that Cal talks about. Because most people are aware of this sense of overwhelm, but workplaces can’t be seen to be reducing pace of work or sense of busyness.
Joseph, great insights. And I agree that, in many cases, we're probably failing to recognize that we are still a bottleneck for stuff that can get done, even if tasks can get passed around more easily than ever. I think I already passed peak asynchronous communication, and have been scaling back (or in some cases) abandoning my various inboxes.
Am looking forward to reading Cal's book. Many people are turning away from the user hustle productivity world. What is a life well lived if we don't stop and look around once in a while? We need to balance life with a bit of Ferris Bueller energy perhaps 😄
What's reassuring is that this concept, and the principles Cal talks about, all play out at a more macro/corporate level too: the distinction is between "operational speed" and "strategic speed."
According to one study, the firms that “slowed down to speed up” — making alignment a priority and allowing time to reflect and learn — improved the bottom line, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three-year period.
Wow, thanks so much for this Renita. This jibes so well with something I was just reading about surgical teams and how they learned new procedures more rapidly when they had reflection time. I'm going to pick up "Strategic Speed," a book by one of the authors here. Really appreciate you sharing this.
There are a few key reasons why slow productivity can be difficult for people to put into practice:
Inertia of busyness culture. We've been conditioned to equate busyness and packed schedules with importance and success. Slowing down feels like you're falling behind or not striving hard enough. Habits are tough to break.
Fear of missing out (FOMO). When everyone around you seems to be hustling nonstop, it can spur anxiety that you should always be doing more too. Slow productivity requires ignoring the Joneses.
Lack of boundaries. Without strong boundaries, other people's agendas and requests can quickly pile up. Practice saying no and capping commitments requires concerted effort.
Difficulty measuring value. Slow output is hard to quantify. Without clear indicators of progress, it's tough not to slip back into using activity as a proxy for productivity. Defining success metrics aligned with your values is key.
Impatience and instant gratification mindsets. Slow gains compound over lengthy timeframes. But we often crave immediate results, losing motivation for long-term projects. Reframing your reference points is important.
Hard to monetize slow output. Funding years of effort before any result requires frugality and smart leveraging of resources. Exploring multiple revenue streams helps alleviate financial pressures.
In the end, adopting slow productivity necessitates both mindset shifts (how we think about productivity and success) and habit changes (how we structure our days and semana). It's simple but not easy. Unlearning assumptions and ingrained behaviors takes concerted, patient effort over time.
Great list, Kyle, thanks so much for this. So much of this, to me, comes down in one sense or another, to short/long-term tradeoffs. And the short-term is just a lot easier to see and measure in most cases. You also reminded me of the Japanese word "inemuri," which means falling asleep at work — seen as a good thing because you're totally exhausted. Serious busyness culture!
"Slowing down feels like you're falling behind or not striving hard enough." And when you intentionally do make the decision to slow down it can be disconcerting when you dip back into the stream — go on Linkedin, for example: you forget how much you've been enjoying life and beat yourself up for not getting more done. Ah, human nature! 🤪
I am very familiar with Cal's work, so most of this was not a surprise to me. But I loved the suggestion to have a shared "Waiting to work on" list where people could add their request at the bottom of the list. That one suggestion seems like it could have transformative ripple effects ala Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick. It's one thing to tell leaders that the performance of their organization would do better if they did less, but it's another for everyone on the team to visually take it what's on everyone's plate. Or at least I might hope it would work that way. I've been consulting with leaders for a long time, and while I've had great success in getting them to SEE how their busy lives are impacting work quality, I've had little success at the organizational level getting them to change. Maybe Cal's voice will the wind that knocks over the final wall!
Lastly, I just wanted to send you some encouragement for your own book and to remind you that your readers will be here, whenever you finish. There's no rush, particularly when we have this lovely newsletter to turn to.
Jen, first of all, the bottom of your comment means a lot to me! So thank you. Second, your note about giving people a visual reminded me of two things: first, how Florence Nightingale famously used a polar area diagram to convince the queen that most war casualties were due to hygiene (lists of stats weren't working). And — more recently — I happened to be waiting in a gym during a college basketball practice, and an NBA executive was there listening to a coach give an analytics report on an opponent to the players, and he was shaking his head and told me that unless they give the info as a graphic, it's really hard for it to stick. I feel like we're awash in visualizations, but perhaps not in some of the places where we really need them.
This interview got me thinking on topics I often argue about with others— and usually lose. Very, very few of us have jobs that are life and death, that really, really matter in the grand scheme of things. Therefore, the day to day that we do, isn’t that important. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t matter or won’t make a difference, etc. It’s just to say to put it into perspective. If you don’t do x, y, or z at your job today, right now, right this second— is the world going to end? Is somebody going to die? Chances are, not.
We all tend to place this super high level of importance on our work and the busyness of our lives. But most of that is self-created. What is it that we all truly need to live? In reality not that much. And not everything in our lives in our work requires the same level of priority or the same level of ‘quality work’ as you state above.
When I worked office jobs— mostly nonprofit fundraising— I worked 9-5, and sometimes outside those hours when we had a big event, etc. coming up and the extra work was required. But on any given day, I strolled into the office around 9 and almost, always left at 5. And always, always took an hour lunch. I rarely, if ever, answered an email or took work home with me. That isn’t to say I didn’t think about work, or didn’t check my email at home. But I never created the expectation that I was available outside of the 9-5, M-F work hours.
During the course of the work day, I would reprioritize tasks as they arose, made sure to spend time on the big projects as needed, and spent plenty time randomly browsing Yahoo and doing my own stuff— all the while being one of the most productive employees at any of the places I worked at. Often not only doing my job, but also involving myself in other areas of the organizations I worked for that were of interest to me.
I don’t say all this to brag or be cocky and obnoxious, but I’ve seen too many people stress about things that ultimately don’t matter. That no one is going to notice. I’ve often followed the better to ask forgiveness than permission guideline, and have always owned up to my mistakes. And if I’m not able to do a task, I’ve always talked to my supervisor and have talked through it. And found a way through it. Most people just want to be kept in the loop and like straightforward and honest talk about what you can do and what you can’t accomplish.
Now that I am a full-time writer— an unpaid, full-time writer, as of yet, I try very hard, though not always successfully to focus on the work that actually matters— my writing. And not getting trapped into the busyness and myriad tasks that I often feel that I ‘have’ to do to be successful as a writer.
In any case, thanks again for the insightful interview and new book to be added to my ever growing list!
So great to see some of my favorite nonfiction authors exchanging ideas! I like David’s point about how “quality work” can also often be faster because of the high degree of focus. And I’m certainly using the idea of making my workspace fit my work—including books by both David & Cal on the surrounding shelfs.
Well, Stephen, you clearly have questionable taste;) But I really appreciate the kind words. and so glad you found something here interesting. Best of luck on crafting your workspace! I admit to occasionally buying a book just for a cover I want to turn out.
Being slow like a snail got its productivity of living a life , being alive and lived intentionally. Our productivity is of some hours and rest is the beginning of a ritual to begin. Love the interview and Cal's insight. I have been reading "What I talk about when i talk about running " by Haruki Murakami . Since , I am a runner and I can say that, running , nature and slowing down is how our creativity comes back. Just writing it down. Preparing oneself. Then it all is there.
Strategy #1: Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy.
“The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people ‘playing’ by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.”
I recommend Cal's interviews on Rich Roll and Tim Ferriss' show.
I've found this applies to athletics as well. I didn't get good at skiing until I spent a season trying to ski as slowly as possible.
Fascinating. I wonder if it works in other physical activities in the same way too
Great read, David. You might enjoy this podcast with Claire Hughes Johnson (on Tim Ferriss) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?i=1000647293412 that also talks about really learning to say no and to “renegotiate” commitments.
Love the teaching your kid about slowing down to achieve more.
Also happy to see another runner whose favorite Murakami book isn’t “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” :)
Ha, thanks Kat! I love Murakami, and I find his routines interesting, but I just did not find almost anything in that book about running to be particularly insightful, or even interestingly framed. That said, I've noticed some of my favorite writers tend to have high variance in their output, and I think that speaks to their willingness to try new things.
Provocative article and interview. A missing piece is that knowledge is completely dependent on trust and is profoundly social. Most knowledge workers today are still managed with limited autonomy and traditional managers demand control to minimize risks and stay in charge. (I need to see this before it goes out to prevent mistakes.)
Until leadership is comfortable with worker trust centralized decisions become the norm, more meetings become a measure of performance, and talented people end up wasting time waiting for approvals instead of being productive. Management control is the biggest challenge to productivity, well being, innovation, and learning. No one likes giving up power. Knowledge workers, smart people, and deep talent requires autonomy to decide and that is rare except on the best teams and organizations.
Hey Ed, thanks so much for this. I know sometimes readers peruse these comments, so just want to note for anyone who gets here in the comments: Ed was NASA's first Chief Knowledge Officer. So definitely read his comments.
Ed, you also reminded me a bit of when I was interviewing Ed Catmull a while back, and he mentioned that leaders often react badly to getting surprised in a meeting, and so they try to micromanage the flow of information before the meeting. But he said he wants to be surprised in a meeting, because if he already knows everything in the meeting, there's no need for the meeting.
Thanks, David. That's an excellent and smart consideration from Catmull. No surprise as his book on Pixar (Creativity, Inc) is an excellent case example on what it takes to create and sustain a culture of creativity and knowledge.
There is a significant challenge that while the future of work is happening now (technology, demographics, gig work, deep knowledge growing) the profession of management is still based on concepts from 30 years ago. Too many managers think they must achieve control over the workforce.
excellent interview
Thanks Silvana!
A great interview -- I've been spending more time honoring seasonality in my life and work, which was inspired by Katherine May's "Wintering." Looking forward to Cal's book, thanks for this conversation (and inspiration!).
Thanks for reading Suzanne! I love your phrase, "honoring seasonality."
Thanks! I prefer to think of it as honoring rather than something I have to fight or bend toward my will . . . the freedom of letting go, right?
I love the idea of doing this intentionally. I've noticed the impact of the seasons on my body but likely judged myself too harshly. I've realised I need to pace myself differently with the seasons in all their forms
My "aha" moment around seasonality came through a coach I was working with who challenged me to think about the summer as a period of taking in more content than I was creating. The idea of receiving more than generating helped to to loosen my grip and minimize judgement - so I've tried to integrate this mindset into my larger life and work.
I hope you find this anecdote helpful Sabrina!
Ah wow love that idea Suzanne. Moving with the ebb and flow of what we consume vs what we create is a great way to see it. Thanks for sharing - that's definitely got me pondering
Agree, Sabrina, there are so many diverse rhythms to life. Women often struggle to adapt to the modern work world because it's built for the male 24-hour cycle when instead it's more relevant to schedule activities according to different phases of their monthly cycle — planning and initiating projects in the follicular phase and focusing and completing in the luteal phase, for example (Kate Northrup talks about this on her podcast).
Excellent interview and article. A missing component is that knowledge workers (smart people with deep expertise) often lack the autonomy to make decisions. Management desire for control often leads to the most knowledgeable people not driving the decisions.
We are living in the age of knowledge work, but management is still traditional and tends towards control. Knowledge is profoundly social and requires heavy doses of autonomy.
Thanks David and Cal, looking forward to reading the book. I wonder if we’re reaching a peak of ‘connectedness’, where knowledge workers can’t actually fit any more in and it’s now decreasing the quality of the output in terms of work performance and also health. I’d love to see a ‘slow productivity’ movement, or at least a sense of leaders role-modelling the behaviours that Cal talks about. Because most people are aware of this sense of overwhelm, but workplaces can’t be seen to be reducing pace of work or sense of busyness.
Joseph, great insights. And I agree that, in many cases, we're probably failing to recognize that we are still a bottleneck for stuff that can get done, even if tasks can get passed around more easily than ever. I think I already passed peak asynchronous communication, and have been scaling back (or in some cases) abandoning my various inboxes.
Am looking forward to reading Cal's book. Many people are turning away from the user hustle productivity world. What is a life well lived if we don't stop and look around once in a while? We need to balance life with a bit of Ferris Bueller energy perhaps 😄
"Ferris Bueller energy" ...hahah. Cal's going to be mad he didn't think of that!
Ferris was wise beyond his years haha!
When I was an apprentice, I worked under a journeyman fabricator whose mantra was “if you want to speed up, slow down!”
This resonated with me and I have adopted that mantra as my own
Festina lente! (Make haste slowly.) Also reminds me of a military marksmanship saying: slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
What's reassuring is that this concept, and the principles Cal talks about, all play out at a more macro/corporate level too: the distinction is between "operational speed" and "strategic speed."
According to one study, the firms that “slowed down to speed up” — making alignment a priority and allowing time to reflect and learn — improved the bottom line, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three-year period.
https://hbr.org/2010/05/need-speed-slow-down
Wow, thanks so much for this Renita. This jibes so well with something I was just reading about surgical teams and how they learned new procedures more rapidly when they had reflection time. I'm going to pick up "Strategic Speed," a book by one of the authors here. Really appreciate you sharing this.
Sure thing! You'll probably appreciate my favorite "slow down to speed up" surgeon story:
A brain surgeon has only three minutes to save his patient’s cognitive functions.
He’s frantically giving directions in the OR when one of the hospital’s veteran surgeons comes in and says:
“Dr. Morgan, you only have three minutes. You better slow down.”
So perfect! Your comments have been a wonderful contribution to this post.
Great interview. I'm excited to read the book.
There are a few key reasons why slow productivity can be difficult for people to put into practice:
Inertia of busyness culture. We've been conditioned to equate busyness and packed schedules with importance and success. Slowing down feels like you're falling behind or not striving hard enough. Habits are tough to break.
Fear of missing out (FOMO). When everyone around you seems to be hustling nonstop, it can spur anxiety that you should always be doing more too. Slow productivity requires ignoring the Joneses.
Lack of boundaries. Without strong boundaries, other people's agendas and requests can quickly pile up. Practice saying no and capping commitments requires concerted effort.
Difficulty measuring value. Slow output is hard to quantify. Without clear indicators of progress, it's tough not to slip back into using activity as a proxy for productivity. Defining success metrics aligned with your values is key.
Impatience and instant gratification mindsets. Slow gains compound over lengthy timeframes. But we often crave immediate results, losing motivation for long-term projects. Reframing your reference points is important.
Hard to monetize slow output. Funding years of effort before any result requires frugality and smart leveraging of resources. Exploring multiple revenue streams helps alleviate financial pressures.
In the end, adopting slow productivity necessitates both mindset shifts (how we think about productivity and success) and habit changes (how we structure our days and semana). It's simple but not easy. Unlearning assumptions and ingrained behaviors takes concerted, patient effort over time.
Great list, Kyle, thanks so much for this. So much of this, to me, comes down in one sense or another, to short/long-term tradeoffs. And the short-term is just a lot easier to see and measure in most cases. You also reminded me of the Japanese word "inemuri," which means falling asleep at work — seen as a good thing because you're totally exhausted. Serious busyness culture!
This list! 💯
"Slowing down feels like you're falling behind or not striving hard enough." And when you intentionally do make the decision to slow down it can be disconcerting when you dip back into the stream — go on Linkedin, for example: you forget how much you've been enjoying life and beat yourself up for not getting more done. Ah, human nature! 🤪
I am very familiar with Cal's work, so most of this was not a surprise to me. But I loved the suggestion to have a shared "Waiting to work on" list where people could add their request at the bottom of the list. That one suggestion seems like it could have transformative ripple effects ala Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick. It's one thing to tell leaders that the performance of their organization would do better if they did less, but it's another for everyone on the team to visually take it what's on everyone's plate. Or at least I might hope it would work that way. I've been consulting with leaders for a long time, and while I've had great success in getting them to SEE how their busy lives are impacting work quality, I've had little success at the organizational level getting them to change. Maybe Cal's voice will the wind that knocks over the final wall!
Lastly, I just wanted to send you some encouragement for your own book and to remind you that your readers will be here, whenever you finish. There's no rush, particularly when we have this lovely newsletter to turn to.
Jen, first of all, the bottom of your comment means a lot to me! So thank you. Second, your note about giving people a visual reminded me of two things: first, how Florence Nightingale famously used a polar area diagram to convince the queen that most war casualties were due to hygiene (lists of stats weren't working). And — more recently — I happened to be waiting in a gym during a college basketball practice, and an NBA executive was there listening to a coach give an analytics report on an opponent to the players, and he was shaking his head and told me that unless they give the info as a graphic, it's really hard for it to stick. I feel like we're awash in visualizations, but perhaps not in some of the places where we really need them.
Hi Jen! Check out the study I quoted in the comment above: https://hbr.org/2010/05/need-speed-slow-down
This interview got me thinking on topics I often argue about with others— and usually lose. Very, very few of us have jobs that are life and death, that really, really matter in the grand scheme of things. Therefore, the day to day that we do, isn’t that important. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t matter or won’t make a difference, etc. It’s just to say to put it into perspective. If you don’t do x, y, or z at your job today, right now, right this second— is the world going to end? Is somebody going to die? Chances are, not.
We all tend to place this super high level of importance on our work and the busyness of our lives. But most of that is self-created. What is it that we all truly need to live? In reality not that much. And not everything in our lives in our work requires the same level of priority or the same level of ‘quality work’ as you state above.
When I worked office jobs— mostly nonprofit fundraising— I worked 9-5, and sometimes outside those hours when we had a big event, etc. coming up and the extra work was required. But on any given day, I strolled into the office around 9 and almost, always left at 5. And always, always took an hour lunch. I rarely, if ever, answered an email or took work home with me. That isn’t to say I didn’t think about work, or didn’t check my email at home. But I never created the expectation that I was available outside of the 9-5, M-F work hours.
During the course of the work day, I would reprioritize tasks as they arose, made sure to spend time on the big projects as needed, and spent plenty time randomly browsing Yahoo and doing my own stuff— all the while being one of the most productive employees at any of the places I worked at. Often not only doing my job, but also involving myself in other areas of the organizations I worked for that were of interest to me.
I don’t say all this to brag or be cocky and obnoxious, but I’ve seen too many people stress about things that ultimately don’t matter. That no one is going to notice. I’ve often followed the better to ask forgiveness than permission guideline, and have always owned up to my mistakes. And if I’m not able to do a task, I’ve always talked to my supervisor and have talked through it. And found a way through it. Most people just want to be kept in the loop and like straightforward and honest talk about what you can do and what you can’t accomplish.
Now that I am a full-time writer— an unpaid, full-time writer, as of yet, I try very hard, though not always successfully to focus on the work that actually matters— my writing. And not getting trapped into the busyness and myriad tasks that I often feel that I ‘have’ to do to be successful as a writer.
In any case, thanks again for the insightful interview and new book to be added to my ever growing list!
A co-worker of mine always liked to say, "Will any children have their lives altered by this?"
So great to see some of my favorite nonfiction authors exchanging ideas! I like David’s point about how “quality work” can also often be faster because of the high degree of focus. And I’m certainly using the idea of making my workspace fit my work—including books by both David & Cal on the surrounding shelfs.
Well, Stephen, you clearly have questionable taste;) But I really appreciate the kind words. and so glad you found something here interesting. Best of luck on crafting your workspace! I admit to occasionally buying a book just for a cover I want to turn out.
Being slow like a snail got its productivity of living a life , being alive and lived intentionally. Our productivity is of some hours and rest is the beginning of a ritual to begin. Love the interview and Cal's insight. I have been reading "What I talk about when i talk about running " by Haruki Murakami . Since , I am a runner and I can say that, running , nature and slowing down is how our creativity comes back. Just writing it down. Preparing oneself. Then it all is there.
Cal is definitely one of my favourite writers. I like his take on flow and improving your skills in a given field.
Link to post: https://calnewport.com/flow-is-the-opiate-of-the-medicore-advice-on-getting-better-from-an-accomplished-piano-player/
Strategy #1: Avoid Flow. Do What Does Not Come Easy.
“The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing. If you walk into a music hall at a local university, you’ll hear people ‘playing’ by running through their pieces. This is a huge mistake. Strong pianists drill the most difficult parts of their music, rarely, if ever playing through their pieces in entirety.”