Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

I tried to like this book. I went into it with fairly low expectations (because I feel like Newport’s books tend to have high overlap with each other) and was pleasantly surprised by the first two principles presented. They didn’t feel 100% applicable to someone like me, who has some autonomy in my work but not full autonomy, but there are some nuggets of wisdom in there worth considering.

But the third and final principle felt entirely irrelevant for me. Newport claims that obsessing over quality is the “glue that holds the practice of slow productivity together” and then goes on to explain the principle in a way that feels like it only makes sense to fully independent knowledge workers. He uses the experiences of freelancers, TV/movie directors, artists, and musicians, plus his only experience as a professor, to illustrate his points. By the end of the chapter I felt annoyed and unsure how to obsess over quality in my own job as a software engineer, where I have a fair amount of control over how I get my work done but not much control over what I work on, without just working more; I don’t have the same ability to decide to focus on doing a very narrow set of things well as a freelancer or artist might.

That third principle also made me realize that most of the examples in the entire book had been from folks with highly independent work. I understand that it’s easier to implement slow productivity if you have total freedom in what you work on and how you do it, but the people who meet that condition are relatively few. I want more stories of ordinary, cog-in-the-machine type employees moving towards slow productivity.

I should also acknowledge that I’m probably not really the target audience for the book. Yes, I’m a modern knowledge worker who sometimes has too much to do at once, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by my inability to juggle a multitude of obligations in the same way that I know some people do. I found that what I really wanted was some of these same ideas applied to my personal life; as a parent of young children I never feel like I have enough time to get everything done and struggle to use what little time I do have well.