!Cal Newport's "slow productivity"
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rawtext.club:70/~xiu
2023-03-11
Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia
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I'm a new but pretty keen follower of Cal Newport's work.
His book DIGITAL MINIMALISM caught me at a particularly
strugglesome time last year. It was weeks after I began
my departure from social media[1], I had just about dealt
with the initial jitters and weird physical reactions to
quitting, and just finished Oliver Burkeman's FOUR
THOUSAND WEEKS: TIME MANAGEMENT FOR MORTALS.

Anyway, before the smolweb helped me think long-term
about what I wanted to learn and accomplish, DIGITAL
MINIMALISM helped me reshape my relationship with my
phone, the internet, and other technologies. I've been a
fan of Newport's work ever since and am very excited
about the book he's currently working on, called SLOW
PRODUCTIVITY.

In a video[2] on TheDeepLife.com[3], he suggests slow
productivity is comprised of a three-pronged approach to
work:

1. Do fewer things
2. Work at a natural pace
3. Obsess over quality

He looks to hunter-gatherer communities to understand
what productivity meant to our ancestors[4], and found
that they tended to perform highly skilled work at a
natural pace with breaks throughout the day (such as
hunters resting through the hottest part of the day,
which coincided with when animals would be resting).

The idea is that adopting a slowly productive lifestyle
means we can still satisfy our creative human urges
while operating at a healthy pace and producing high
quality output.

This really appeals to me as someone who has lost count
of how many times I've hit burnout, the consequences of
which are notably amplified by being on Team
Neurodiversity[5].

Admittedly, there are times I wonder whether it was
better when I didn't know about ND and all the things
that come along with it, but I was also younger then and
more ready/able to carry on like everything was fine.

But they weren't fine then and they're not fine now.
Society in general has a problematic relationship with
productivity. It's sometimes tempting to think of it as
an "American hypercapitalism" culture problem, but
Australia's got its own flavour of it too. The culture of
"soldier on" and even that bit of workplace martyrdom
probably stems from the same rhizome.

The notion of slow productivity seems from the outset
like a possible solution to burnout, a way to have fun
and do meaningful stuff without killing oneself over it.
So, yeah, don't take this as a sales pitch, but damn, I
am excited to read this book whenever it comes out.
Sounds like it won't be for ages, thought, which is
rather appropriate when you think about it.

[1]
gopher://rawtext.club/~xiu/phlog/2022-08-30-archive-weaning-off-social.txt
[2] https://invidious.esmailelbob.xyz/zZwPyB20lxg?rel=0&autoplay=1&t=1
[3] https://thedeeplife.com
[4] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/lessons-from-the-deep-history-of-work
[5] https://www.removepaywall.com/https:/www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/well/live/autistic-burnout-advice.html