Get me off this ride! How to shift from ‘crazy busy’ to meaningful productivity

For nearly two decades, I have led a business book club where we feature research-based books related to leadership, neuroscience, employee engagement, and other workplace topics. Every month we walk away with some advice to consider and practical tips to try out. This month’s book, however, produced a get-me-off-this-ride moment…

​Our book was Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. Newport paints the picture of the modern workplace—the never-ending to-do lists, back-to-back meeting days, rolling emergencies, and limited pockets of time for deep work.

The pace of today’s workplace has many screaming, “Get me off this ride!”

Newport challenges us to stop conflating busyness and ambitious to-do lists with productivity. He urges us to focus on meaningful accomplishment and lays out principles for a “more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment.”

Ashley Campana shared highlights from the book and got a great discussion going. If you missed it, Ashley’s notes are posted to the CliffsNotes Book Club portal.

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Slow Productivity - My Key Takeaways

​As with every book club discussion, we riffed on the author’s key points and discussed what’s worked for us and how we might make changes inspired by Newport’s guidance. Here are some of the discussion points that particularly resonated:
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• Pause to ask, Why does this matter? Central to Newport’s philosophy is understanding the why behind our actions. It’s easy to fill a to-do list and wonderful to feel the dopamine hit that comes from ticking off one item after another. However, one of the key points in the discussion is simply to evaluate every to-do item before committing to it. In the business world we think about effort and impact, but we don’t always think about what’s truly meaningful. Pausing to ask the question “Why does this matter?” can help.
• Draw it! As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words. At book club, we discussed how a visual map, one-pager with key work areas, or Kanban board are excellent tools to both envision the full scope of your work and help communicate it to others. This could work at the individual or team/workstream level. Tasked with a new hot priority item? Share your one-pager and discuss what timelines or priorities can shift to accommodate the hot item.
• Negotiate! While no one at book club could disagree with preferring the end-state Newport describes—a calm, focused block of time to do meaningful work—we all wondered if ever in the history of the business world there’s been a leader who’s managed to sell the C-Suite on a corporate strategy around “Let’s slow down.” (Unlikely!) We talked about how the key skill needed to shift a workplace culture toward slow productivity is negotiation. As requests come in, consider what’s at play. As we know, something can be done good, fast, or cheap—pick two, but not all three. The key is to communicate the positives and negatives of the options and help others understand the ramifications.

Do you know of any workplaces that embody the principles of “slow productivity?”

What would you add to my list?