Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published by Portfolio.

ISBN:
978-0-593-54485-3
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4 stars (1 review)

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the key principles of …

3 editions

A quick read, short topic

4 stars

I do enjoy Cal Newports work and his approach. This book builds upon some of his recent essays and podcasts, and is specifically targeted at knowledge workers. It's harder to measure work of this bunch due to it's often intangelibity. He wants through his advice to deal with this by doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality.

The book touches each topic and brings some recent and current day examples to the dialog. He hints at a potential series of titles about working in the modern age. Between this, his recent two titles "Digital Minimalism", "A World Without Email" kind of set the stage for a natural progression, all starting from "Deep Work".

It's written in a very readable tone, and might take a focused reader 2-4 hours to read speed depending from cover to cover. If you've read his other books, this is the …