Why Doing Less Is More

Slow productivity & accomplishment without burnout

In Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity, Newport advocates for a slower and more deliberate approach to life. There are three tenants to his philosophy:

(1) Do fewer things,

(2) Work at a natural pace, and

(3) Obess over quality.

Slow productivity rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing meaningful results. Life's efforts should unfold at a more varied and humane pace, with challenging periods counterbalanced by rest and relaxation. A focus on impressive quality, not performative activity, should underpin everything.

Pseudo-Productivity

“Work” has become a vague term for what employees do in an office. More work seems to produce better results than less. It's the manager’s job to ensure that enough work is done because, without pressure, employees get lazy and attempt to do the bare minimum. Tension between managers, employees, and “work” arises because it’s difficult to measure productivity in knowledge workers.

In the agricultural era, productivity was measured quantitatively in bushels per acre. Any work and improvements to systems resulted in a higher land yield. In the industrial era, productivity was measured quantitatively in widgets produced per paid hour of labor. Work and systemic improvements resulted in more widgets produced per hour. Back then, management was reasonably straightforward.

In the current technological era, the old notions of productivity that worked so well in farming and manufacturing do not apply to the new style of cognitive work. The main issue is the variability of effort. In an assembly line, each worker was responsible for a single, clearly defined task, like fastening a tire to a car on the conveyor belt. Clearly defined tasks enabled management to precisely measure their output per unit of time and seek ways to improve metrics. In contrast, knowledge workers are often wrangling complex and constantly shifting workloads. Knowledge workers today are paid for the merit of their thoughts; therefore, companies lack standard metrics to measure employee productivity.

In the vacuum of a standard productivity metric, busyness has become the default measure of pseudo-productivity. Busyness has become a visible activity heuristic. It's why we gather in offices and use the same forty-hour workweeks initially developed to limit the physical fatigue of factory labor. It’s also why we feel guilty about ignoring our inboxes, missing pointless meetings, and feeling internal pressure to volunteer for another project or working harder when the boss is wandering near our office.

In a setting where busyness is a proxy for productivity, introducing communication tools like email, Slack, and Zoom makes it possible to signal busyness with minimal effort. This 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 and meetings. When you want to care about something but you’re removed from the capacity to do it properly, giving your full passion, attention, and creativity, that's when burnout sets in. This is why 60 percent of knowledge workers have retired, quit their profession, or changed companies multiple times since the pandemic.

The Antidote to Busyness

Do fewer things.

Clients demand attention, and managers drown you in requests. Knowledge workers should strive to reduce their obligations to the point where they can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. They can leverage this reduced load to fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.

Microsoft reported that meetings have increased by 250 percent since the pandemic. This critical insight highlights that in knowledge work, whenever you agree to a new commitment — be it a minor task or a large project — it brings ongoing administrative overhead. Back-and-forth email threads are needed to gather information, and meetings are scheduled to synchronize with collaborators. This overhead tax takes hold whenever you agree to take on a new responsibility. As your to-do list grows, so does the total amount of overhead tax you’re paying.

It's no wonder knowledge workers feel utterly burnt out. They're as busy as ever, yet they hardly get anything done. The advantage of doing fewer things is twofold:

(1) Reduced overhead increases the number of hours dedicated to focused work, and

(2) The quality of focused work improves.

We don’t need science to convince us of something we've all experienced directly—our brains work better when we are not rushed and overloaded. Focusing intensely on a smaller number of tasks and finishing each before beginning something new is a much better way to produce valuable output.

Work at a natural pace.

Humans have been hunters and gatherers for the last 300,000 years. Our days were varied in effort. We’d spend most of the day leisurely foraging, roaming new territory, or napping in the sweltering midday sun. Hunts were reserved for early mornings or late evenings and rarely lasted beyond a few hours. Then, roughly 10,000 years ago, we began to farm. Farmers worked from dusk until dawn every day from planting to harvest. However, the winter season naturally gave farmers a much-needed break from work.

It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that workers worked all day, all year round. History has proven Karl Marx wrong about most things. However, he was right about his theory of Entfremdung (estrangement), which argued that industrial conditions alienated humans from their fundamental human nature. Unions were formed to counterbalance the dehumanizing aspects of industrialization. Workers were given shorter days, a capped 40-hour work week with overtime pay, sick leave, and paid vacation.

When harvesting crops or working the assembly line, monotonous, all-day effort is unavoidable. However, with knowledge work, that's not the case. Working with unceasing intensity is artificial, unsustainable, and is what leads to burnout. A more natural, slower, and varied working pace is the foundation of sustained productivity in the long term — it's anthropologically fundamental to our species.

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 your results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long term. There's a reason this principle is presented last — it's the glue that holds the practice of slow productivity together. Doing fewer things and working at a natural pace are both essential components of the philosophy, but without an obsession with quality, they only serve to fray your relationship to work.

Most of us do just one thing that assesses our professional performance. Juggling many different objectives is a sine qua non of knowledge work, but if we look deeper past our busy to-do lists, we’ll find just one or two core activities that matter most. To discover those core activities, ask yourself if you approached your boss for a promotion, what statistics would you show to convince them you've been an exceptional talent? For academics, it may be how many research papers have been published in major journals. It may be how many new deals were signed in the past quarter for salesmen. For investors, it may be the percentage return of their portfolio.

The third and final principle asks you to obsess over the quality of the core activities in your professional life. Obsessing over quality often demands slowing down, as the focus required to improve is simply incompatible with busyness.