A Revolution in Creativity: On Slow Writing

The second principle of slow productivity asks that you approach your work with a more natural pace. This proposition offers the first of three ideas for how to achieve this goal: follow Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lead and become comfortable taking longer on important projects. This request, of course, is fraught. The boundary between Miranda’s slow but

I like the notion that in the struggle to create something—to bring to fruition a project, a work of art, a company, whatever— sometimes the best strategy is slowness.

The slow productivity mindset, by contrast, finds advantages to a more languid pace. Frequent cold starts can inject more creativity into your efforts, an effect Miranda seems to have leveraged in the uneven but insistent improvement of In the Heights. It also allowed him to explore and develop as both a creative and a human being. College sophomor