What I Love About Slow Productivity
What if everything we believe about productivity is wrong?
Society equates busyness with productivity...
But what if that's holding you back?
Cal Newport thinks so.
He says social media has instilled constant urgency into our lives.
It's harder than ever to not compare yourself to abnormal productivity standards.
We can't scroll social media without seeing someone who makes or works more than us.
So we try hard to live up to the productivity ideals the world set for us.
Despite knowing that this "do more" productivity isn't sustainable.
The result -
We often feel we could've done more, making us unhappy about our performance - and ourselves.
I've been there—overloaded and burning out despite apparent success.
Like many founders, I felt constant pressure to do more, leading to burnout and dissatisfaction.
Until quite recently, actually, when a book put words to my feelings better than I could myself.
That book was Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.
It helped me slow down again.
Since I know I'm not alone when it comes to feeling pressure to "hustle" more - in today's newsletter I want to share 3 of the biggest takeaways I had from Cal's book.
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But now, back to 3 takeaways from Slow Productivity
3 Takeaways From Cal Newport's Slow Productivity
This is not just another "get more done while working less" book.
It doesn't help you live up to today's productivity ideals.
Instead, it questions where they came from in the first place - and whether they serve you.
My takeaways:
1. Do fewer things
As founders, we feel immense pressure to move fast.
To take on everything that comes our way.
But this scattered focus is counterproductive:
- Every task adds administrative overhead (communications, etc.)
- The more tasks you have, the more of your time you spend on admin overhead
- This leads to less time for working on the projects that matter - despite you working more
Newport argues that the real drain isn't executing small tasks. It's the cognitive effort required to remember, worry about, and schedule them.
So he proposes you should work only on 1 project per day.
"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." - Cal Newport
But it's not just about doing less.
It's also about lowering the cognitive load of the things you do take on.
One powerful way to do this is through rituals - regular times for specific tasks.
They reduce your mental overhead.
For example:
- Schedule all your meetings on the same day each week
- Do your most important deep work at the same time each morning
- Reply to emails and messages in pre-set office hours
When activities become rituals, you barely have to think about them.
Your brain adapts and the friction melts away.
You get more done in less time, with less stress. (Click to tweet)
2. Work at a natural pace
In the race to scale quickly, it's easy to treat ourselves like machines. To push relentlessly and ignore our human need for rest and renewal.
But founders aren't machines.
We're athletes.
Athletes:
- Train in short, high-intensity sessions
- Know that overtraining leads to lower performance
- Treat rest and nutrition not as chores, but as a part of their performance
The best productivity drug is sleep.
To work at your natural pace, implement a pull-based task management system.
Here's how it works:
- Keep two lists - a "holding pen" for all tasks, and an "active" list limited to 3-5 items
- Only pull new tasks into "active" as you complete the current ones
- Let go of the rest until you have the capacity
- Clean the list once a week
(Steal my Pull-Based task management system)
This system forces you to only take on more tasks after you've finished the existing ones.
Pushing harder isn't the answer.
Embrace your natural rhythms and limits.
Pull tasks as you have the capacity. You'll achieve more with less resistance.
3. Obsess over quality
In the startup world, the mantra is often "quantity over quality". Get more reps in.
One of my principles is "done is better than perfect".
But while there's value to that approach, it's easy to forget that not all repetitions are equal -
You need more quality repetitions.
Athletes improve by training at their highest effort. So do cognitive athletes.
What would make you a better writer -
- Writing 100 articles in one hour with ChatGPT?
- Or writing one high-quality article by hand over 100 hours?
Newport makes a simple point:
"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."
Basically, he says there's immense value in being in the top 0.1% at one thing.
Quality takes time. The process is slow.
But the compounding benefits of becoming world-class at your craft are undeniable.
Measure your productivity by quality instead of quantity.
If you get just 1% better at what you do, you're productive.
Newport said that one of the most powerful ways to elevate your craft is to surround yourself with like-minded people.
When you gather with like-minded professionals, magic happens:
• You're exposed to diverse approaches
• Nuance and new possibilities emerge
• Performing for others pushes you to up your game
This collective upgrade in taste and standards is one reason I'm so passionate about building the Founder OS community. It's a space for driven founders to connect, level up, and achieve more by going slow.
If you want to get started with Slow Productivity, here are 3 steps to get started:
1) Read the full book (not affiliated)
2) Steal my Slow Productivity Template to implement a pull-based task system
3) Get an assistant to cut cognitive overhead and focus on the few important things
That's all for today.
Let's win together 🥇
Matt
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