take whatever timelines you first identify as reasonable for upcoming projects, and then double their length.

But we don’t need science to convince us of something that we’ve all experienced directly: our brains work better when we’re not rushing.

I mention this well-worn tale of Jack Kerouac’s inspired writing binge because it neatly captures an obvious objection to the second principle of slow productivity: sometimes a natural pace is too slow.

A consultant named Chris, for example, pushed the quality of his team’s client work “much higher” by relegating email to one hour in the morning and a half hour in the evening, while also demanding that his team observe a three-hour deep-work period

In most cases, their audience wouldn’t care about the minor quality difference between that professional mic and a cheaper USB option, but to the aspiring podcaster, it’s a signal to themselves that they’re taking the pursuit seriously. We also see these dynamics at play when computer programmers set up elaborate digital workstations featuring two

PRINCIPLE #2: WORK AT A NATURAL PACE Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.

When you separate work from the ad hoc conversations that surround it,

Inspired in part by this article, I’ve become convinced in recent years that pull workflows are a powerful tool to avoid overload in the knowledge work setting.

Interlude: What about Perfectionism?