Better, Faster, Stronger...Slower?
Speed and efficiency are the promise of modernity. But speed and efficiency are all destination and no journey. And it is journey that gives life meaning.
How do we reclaim the joy of doing something slow and difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest? If more effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter (doomscrolling for hours) th... See more
How do we reclaim the joy of doing something slow and difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest? If more effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter (doomscrolling for hours) th... See more
Slow productivity, more than anything else, is a plea to step back from the frenzied activity of the daily grind. It’s not that these efforts are arbitrary: our anxious days include tasks and appointments that really do need to get done. But once you realize, as McPhee did, that this exhausted scrambling is often orthogonal to the activities that m
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
2 A SLOWER ALTERNATIVE
Cal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
describes what happens as a result: “our lives become about the struggle to keep up.” She continues, “To truly feel our experience with depth and presence, we would have to slow down a lot (which would make us less efficient consumers, students, workers, prisoners, soldiers…).”
Tara McMullin • What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting
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 ... See more