Productivity vs Insight, Tools for Reflection, and Other Questions Answered
There’s no reasonable definition of productivity that shouldn’t also apply to John McPhee, and yet nothing about his work habits is frantic, busy, or overwhelming. This initial insight developed into the core idea that this book will explore: perhaps knowledge workers’ problem is not with productivity in a general sense, but instead with a specific
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Productivity tools shape our thinking in ways that favor standardization, efficiency, and predictability. They demand structure before inspiration has a chance to strike. They ask for timelines when the problem itself is still hazy. But creativity is not linear. Often, it involves struggling down several blind alleys before finding the right path.
Sari Azout • The End of Productivity
Today’s knowledge workers carry a growing sense of anxiety. We have more tools than ever, but these options rarely match how we actually create. Rather than build more technology that keeps us on a miserable hamster wheel of churning out more shallow content, we have a unique opportunity to design tools that encourage us to slow down and create wit... See more
Sari Azout • The End of Productivity
Slow productivity is just one response among many to a much bigger problem: The world of cognitive work lacks coherent ideas about how our efforts should be organized and measured.
Cal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
A consistent challenge in my development as a researcher has been: how to cultivate deep, stable concentration in the face of complex, ill-structured creative problems?
In roles oriented around operation and execution, I benefited enormously from standard “productivity” advice. Task managers and time-planning tools were essential. But now, task mana
... See moreAndy Matuschak • Cultivating Depth and Stillness in Research
The carefully engineered systems of factories were replaced with the “personal productivity” of offices, in which individuals deploy their own ad hoc and often ill-defined collection of tools and hacks to make sense of their jobs, with no one really knowing how anyone else is managing their work.