Slow Productivity

Why doing less is the secret to doing your best work

Do you feel like you are constantly running just to stay in the same place?

You check your email every five minutes.

You answer Slack messages instantly. You have ten tabs open.

By 5:00 PM, you are exhausted, yet you feel like you didn’t actually finish anything important.

If you have ADHD or struggle with executive function, this “busy” feeling isn’t just annoying – it’s paralyzing.

According to Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and the bestselling author of Deep Work, this isn’t your fault.

It is the fault of a modern work culture that prizes activity over actual results.

Newport argues that the secret to reclaiming your brain isn’t to work faster.

It is to embrace a philosophy he calls Slow Productivity.

Here is how Newport suggests you can stop the “busy” cycle and start building a “deep life.”

The Trap: Escaping the “Hyperactive Hive Mind”

First, we need to name the enemy.

Newport describes modern work as a “hyperactive hive mind.”

This is a workflow centered around ongoing, unstructured conversation.

It is the belief that you must be available to answer emails and messages instantly to be “productive.”

For someone with ADHD, the hive mind is a nightmare.

It creates constant context switching. Every time your phone pings, your focus shatters.

Answering emails is one of the most cognitively distressing activities because every message is associated with a different cognitive context.

This forces the brain to switch drastically from one frame to another, never allowing enough time to switch contexts over.

The hyperactive hive mind renders deep work impossible, leading to less production.

Newport’s insight is simple but radical: Being busy is not the same as being productive.

“Activity does not mean productivity. If you send 100 emails but don’t write the report you were supposed to write, you weren’t productive.” — Cal Newport

The opposite of the hyperactive hive mind is sequentiality: working on one thing at a time until a stopping point, and then moving to the next.

The key metric to minimize is the number of unscheduled messages that require responses.

3 Pillars of Slow Productivity

In his research, Newport argues that we need to stop viewing our energy as infinite.

He proposes Slow Productivity as an antidote to burnout.

It relies on three specific principles:

1. Do Fewer Things

Doing fewer things sounds counterintuitive.

However, Newport explains that when you overload your to-do list, you create “overhead.”

You spend more time managing your tasks than doing them.

The primary goal of embracing a natural pace is to achieve sustainability and avoid burnout.

By doing fewer things, the individual creates the breathing room and control necessary for their work pace to follow natural cycles.

Reducing the workload is essential because quality demands concentration and attention, which are incompatible with the fragmented schedule caused by high administrative overhead.

The Fix:

The strategy is not to work less hard overall, but to replace the frenetic, shallow activity (pseudo-productivity) caused by an overloaded schedule with focused, intentional effort directed toward a small number of high-value outcomes.

Ruthlessly cut your project list.

Extremely productive people succeed because their productivity is built on a default of saying no to most things, understanding that almost everything is secondary and gets in the way of what is truly valuable

A critical component of the natural pace is taking longer on tasks, rejecting the pressure to rush work.

Focus on one or two major goals at a time.

Reducing commitments allows the professional to adopt a sustained, relentless but reasonable pace, trusting that consistent small progress will compound over the long term, making frantic rushing unnecessary.

2. Work at a Natural Pace

Humans are not machines.

We are not designed to run at 100% capacity, 365 days a year.

Newport’s research highlights a massive disconnect between our biology and our office jobs.

He argues that humans are wired for variation, not constant linearity.

Looking at our deep history, Newport points out:

Hunter-Gatherers: Experienced intense bursts of energy (the hunt) followed by long periods of rest.
Farmers: Worked tirelessly during harvest but had “down seasons” like winter where work was minimal.

Modern knowledge work ignores this. It creates what Newport calls an “unnatural edifice of continuous invisible factory labor.”

We try to replicate the machine-like consistency of a factory assembly line using our brains.

The result?

Burnout, “pseudo-productivity,” and activity for activity’s sake.

“Striving to always be focused is like an athlete striving to always have their muscles in a state of load-bearing strain. It is absurd and leads to overload.” — Cal Newport

Next Steps: Find Your Rhythm

Stop trying to force your brain to perform at 100% capacity from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.

It fills your schedule with “filler stuff” and creates exhaustion.

Allow for seasons of intensity and seasons of rest.

Ready to stop the frenetic sprinting? Try these three steps:

The “No-Meeting” Day: Block out one day next week where you refuse all calls and meetings. Use it for slow, quiet catch-up.
Shorten the Focus: Stop aiming for 8 hours of focus. Aim for 2 hours of high-quality work tomorrow, and let the rest be “maintenance.”
Micro-Cycle (Daily): Don’t schedule back-to-back heavy tasks. If you have a high-focus morning, schedule a “low-bandwidth” afternoon of filing or cleaning up your inbox.
Mid-Cycle (Weekly): Designate specific days (like Fridays) as “low intensity” days to catch up on administrative tasks.
Mid-Cycle (Monthly): Newport suggests working in 6-to-8-week cycles of urgency. Push hard on a project, but once it ships, schedule a “cool-down period.”
The Cooldown: Look at your calendar. After your next big deadline, immediately block off two days for lighter, administrative work.

3. Obsess Over Quality

Newport argues that rushing produces mediocrity.

The principle of obsessing over quality is rooted in the philosophy captured by the mantra, “Be so good they can’t ignore you”.

The desire to do things really well makes the reduction of busyness and the adoption of a natural pace self-evident and necessary.

The professional sees themselves reducing busyness not because they dislike work, but because they want to be better at their core value-producing activity

If you have ADHD or anxiety, “Obsess Over Quality” might sound terrifying. It sounds like a recipe for paralysis.

Newport is very clear here: Quality does not mean Perfectionism.

He suggests you must “walk the tightrope.”

Perfectionism is fear. It prevents you from shipping because you are afraid it isn’t flawless.
Quality is professional. It means producing the best possible result within your constraints.

“The goal is not to produce the absolute best thing possible in the universe. The goal is to produce something really good, given the time you have.” — Cal Newport

Practical Strategies for Pursuing Quality

Obsessing over quality requires specific strategies, particularly to overcome the inherent challenge of perfectionism.

Walk the Tightrope of Perfectionism: Since the fear of perfectionism is a “natural unavoidable corally to obsessing over quality,” the strategy is to set stakes in the ground: external deadlines or accountability benchmarks. This shifts the goal from producing the absolute best thing possible to producing something really good, given the time constraints.
Systematic Skill Building: Quality is achieved through a systematic training regime where one identifies a valuable skill and works relentlessly and deliberately to improve it. This requires putting in the “hard work of reconfiguring your mind to understand something new”.
Invest in Seriousness: Tools and investment should signal the seriousness of the endeavor. This psychological investment enhances focus, aligning the mind to the gravity of the task at hand.
Embrace the Hard is Good: The pursuit of something hard and making progress in that pursuit generates a lot of human meaning. The hard work (e.g., intense cognitive effort) is good, whereas the “hard to do work” (e.g., constant context switching and administrative junk) should be minimized.

Next Steps: Start Your Quality Audit

Ready to build your leverage? Try this today:

Cut the noise: What “pseudo-productive” task (like checking stats or over-monitoring chat) can you stop doing to make time for that improvement?
Identify Your “One Thing”: What is the one task you do that actually adds value to your company/client?
The 15% Rule: Can you find a way to improve the quality of that specific task by just 15% this week?

Tame the Chaos with “Time Blocking”

If you have executive function challenges, a blank to-do list is often overwhelming. You don’t know where to start.

Newport is a huge advocate for Time Blocking. instead of listing what to do, you map out when you will do it.

Why this works:

It forces you to be realistic about how long things take.
It eliminates the decision fatigue of asking, “What should I do next?”
It creates a “container” for your work.

Newport’s Tip:

It is recommended to work in sustained blocks, suggesting at least an hour at a time, because it takes up to 20 minutes to clear attention residue.

The author expresses a partiality for 90 minutes as a good chunk of time to get a lot done before exhaustion sets in.

By theming tasks so they belong to the same cognitive context, for instance, batching all social planning tasks together, an individual can execute them much faster and with less subjective resistance and mental fatigue.

If you get off track (which happens!), don’t panic.

Just fix your schedule for the remaining hours of the day and keep going.

Prioritize “Deep Work” Over Shallow Work

Newport distinguishes between two types of effort:

Shallow Work: Non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. (e.g., checking email, filling out forms, Slack chats).
Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.

If you struggle with focus, you likely drift toward Shallow Work because it is easier.

It gives you a quick dopamine hit.

But Deep Work is where value is created.

How to fix it:

Newport suggests scheduling “Deep Work” blocks on your calendar just like meetings.

Treat them as non-negotiable.

Even 90 minutes of protected time can outperform 8 hours of distracted “busy work.”

The Shutdown Ritual

Do you carry work stress home with you? Does your brain keep spinning with “I forgot to do X” while you’re trying to relax?

Newport suggests a formal Shutdown Ritual at the end of every workday.

Review your inbox to ensure nothing urgent is missed.
Update your plan for the next day.
Say a phrase out loud (e.g., “Schedule shutdown complete”).

This ritual signals to your brain that work is done.

It is a crucial boundary for mental health, allowing you to actually rest so you can focus again tomorrow.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Your Attention

Cal Newport’s philosophy teaches us that a “deep life” isn’t about doing more.

It is about doing what matters.

By rejecting the “hyperactive hive mind” and embracing Slow Productivity, you don’t just become a better worker.

You become a calmer, happier person. You stop reacting to the world and start living with intention.

Next Steps: Start Your Deep Journey Today

Ready to stop the busyness? Try these three steps tomorrow:

Audit Your Day: Identify the “shallow work” that eats up your time. Can you batch it all into one hour?
Block Your Time: Give every minute of your workday a job. Remember to include breaks!
Try a Shutdown Ritual: Tonight, take 10 minutes to plan tomorrow, then close your laptop and don’t open it until morning.

Reference

Newport, C. (2024). Slow productivity. Alisio.