I’ve usually had good luck with the books from the best books list on The Economist. This year is no exception. I’ve recently read two of the books on the list: Playing with Reality and Slow Productivity and have started another, Co-Intelligence. So far, I’ve not been disappointed.
I’ll start with Slow Productivity by Cal Newport and cover the others in future posts. I found it to be quite interesting. I see so much silly faux productivity out there; meetings just for sake of meetings, people answering IMs and emails at all hours but adding little clarity or insight to the discussion at hand, lack of time and space for focused effort, etc. that slowing down does seem to be a better way than just rushing around for the sake of looking busy.
The three core recommendations of the book make a lot of sense:
- Do Fewer Things
- Work at a Natural Pace
- Obsess over Quality
Mr. Newport comes to these by outlining why “productivity” is not properly measured in the information based work environment and how this leads to poor outcomes for people and the organizations they work for. He derives these recommendations from looking at the work of highly successful and creative people from different backgrounds and offers some ways to orient work towards these recommendations.
Slow productivity has great resonance with me. I believe that one of the most important things to be decided is what not to do. You need to continually kill projects and initiatives so that the best ones survive and get the most attention. That is part of do fewer things so he had me right from the beginning.
The suggestions for working at a natural pace are harder to carry out unless you work in a specific sort of organization. Some of the ideas he proposes around time boxing efforts, blocking time out, and transparently communicating about realistic timelines and implications of requests are useful in any organization but your mileage may vary in terms of real impact on working at a natural pace depending on your workplace.
The emphasis on high quality work is great. We all want to do that and given the time and space to deliver excellent work makes a big difference both to our individual satisfaction and organizational performance.
I found the book to be a useful explanation on why slow productivity makes sense. The “how-to” part is more difficult but I appreciated the ideas presented on how to make it happen. I already do some of these things and will try to adopt some more into my work life.