{"id":4621,"date":"2024-06-12T10:41:03","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T15:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/?p=4621"},"modified":"2024-06-12T10:42:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T15:42:39","slug":"slow-productivity-is-a-team-sport-a-critique-of-cal-newports-slow-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meredith.wolfwater.com\/wordpress\/2024\/06\/12\/slow-productivity-is-a-team-sport-a-critique-of-cal-newports-slow-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow productivity is a team sport: A critique of Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Image credit: Dolce far Niente by John Singer Sargent <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the fourth in a series of essays I’ve written on time.<\/em> You can view a list of all of them on the first essay<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was going to be a somewhat different essay before I read Cal Newport\u2019s Slow Productivity<\/em>. I read the book the day it came out, interested in seeing how he incorporated the ideas from slow movements into the world of productivity, since in so many ways, productivity is the enemy of slowness. Given what I\u2019d read of his work in the New Yorker<\/em>, I was skeptical that he would really embrace slowness in his book and I discovered my skepticism was more than justified. I\u2019m going to start by critiquing Newport\u2019s book, but then get into my own vision for what it might take to achieve slow productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late 2021, Cal Newport began writing about \u201cslow productivity,\u201d largely in response to a tidal wave of published books that questioned our society\u2019s focus on productivity (for productivity pundits, the answer is always productivity). He saw the goal of slow productivity as \u201ckeep[ing] an individual worker\u2019s volume at a sustainable level\u201d and argued that this will not have a negative impact on organizational productivity because less overloaded workers will be less focused on managing a glut of information. He envisioned systems that will track people\u2019s work and assign new tasks based on when the people with the needed skills have time available. In a world full of unique individuals whose capacities vary day by day and where most tasks are far from mechanistic, I question whether this is possible. Tack on the fact that we have people working at varying levels of precarity plus the fact that our reward systems incentivize overwork and we\u2019re always going to have some people who feel the need to do significantly more to prove themselves. Creating systems that don\u2019t change the underlying realities and inequities in the world of work will not adequately address the issue of overwork and overwhelm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely, though, his book has no suggestions for how slow productivity could be achieved at the systems level. It\u2019s so individual-focused, that he suggests only taking on projects that don\u2019t require meetings with others (the \u201coverhead tax\u201d on projects he calls it). The idea that meetings with others could make us better at our jobs doesn\u2019t seem to occur to him. His understanding of slow proves to be surface-level at best. The slow movement isn\u2019t just about individuals choosing to step away from fast culture; it\u2019s about changing the culture so that everyone can slow down. Otherwise it just becomes an elitist enterprise where only those with the most privilege can actually access the benefits of slow living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mountz, et al. (2015) wrote about slow scholarship, arguing that it \u201cis not just about time, but about structures of power and inequality. This means that slow scholarship cannot just be about making individual lives better, but must also be about re-making the university\u201d (1238). Slow Food advocate, Folco Portinari (the author of the slow food manifesto<\/a> though I rarely see him credited), wrote \u201cthere can be no slow-food without slow-life, meaning that we cannot influence food culture without changing our culture as a whole.\u201d Slow Food isn\u2019t just about buying local and slow scholarship isn\u2019t just about not buying into the productivity expectations of the academy. It\u2019s about collectively working to change the systems themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, really, Cal Newport is not writing this book for most of us. He\u2019s writing it for white, male (there are plenty of<\/a> critiques of<\/a> his previous work<\/a> on the basis of sexism<\/a>), affluent, lone geniuses who aren\u2019t accountable to a boss. He waits until the end of the book to explicitly state that his advice is for academics and people who work for themselves, but when he offers advice like go see a movie matinee on a weekday once a month, take month+ long vacations to gain perspective, cut your salary, and only take on projects that require no collaboration with others, we see how unrelatable this is to most knowledge workers. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
I\u2019ll bet he pulled himself up by his bootstraps!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

All you need to know about Newport\u2019s philosophy you can get from page 7 of the book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slow productivity [is] a philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:<\/p>

1. Do fewer things<\/p>

2. Work at a natural pace<\/p>

3. Obsess over quality<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I agree that these are good goals, but his book won\u2019t help you get there. The rest of the book is recycled productivity tips from his previous work (many of which won\u2019t work unless you have total control over your work) punctuated by completely unrelatable stories of famous figures throughout history that don\u2019t connect well to any sort of usable takeaway. I read his story of Jane Austen and how she was only able to really be productive in her writing when her brother inherited an estate, she went to live there, and the family decided not to participate in society anymore. So is the takeaway that I need no children, plenty of servants, and no social engagements to be productive? Cool cool cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will never understand why we trust advice from people who have zero experience working the sort of jobs we have. It would be one thing if his work was research-based, but it isn\u2019t. Early in the book, he writes about how people don\u2019t really understand why people are suddenly so exhausted and burned out by work, but there\u2019s ample research in the sociology, anthropology, business, and psychology literature that addresses this. I know because I\u2019ve read a lot of it! And if we\u2019re trusting his experience, what does a person who went from Ivy League undergraduate work, to graduate work at MIT, to a post-doc, to a tenure-line position at Georgetown in computer science really know about what it\u2019s like to work in a typical knowledge organization with a manager and peers who rely on them? I am in a massively privileged position where I have tenure and summers off and even I found very little that I could apply to my own work. As an instruction librarian, I teach students to look into the author of something they are going to rely on and determine if\/why they would trust that particular author\u2019s expertise on that subject. Maybe we should do the same?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re looking for really brilliant and well-researched work relevant to slow productivity, check out Melissa Gregg\u2019s Counterproductive<\/em>, both of Jenny Odell\u2019s books, Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks<\/em>, Carl Honor\u00e9\u2019s book on the slow movement, and Wendy Parkins and Geoffrey Craig\u2019s Slow Living<\/em>. They will not offer you concrete tips for being more productive, but, really, there\u2019s no magical list of tips that will work for everyone. They will open your mind to what\u2019s wrong with how we\u2019ve been working and what is possible if we came together to collectively fight for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my next post, I’ll share my own vision of what slow productivity looks like (I decided to break this up into two posts because it was getting a bit long). My tips for slow productivity are quite different from Newport\u2019s in that they\u2019re much more focused on our collectivity. He was right in his piece on \u201cThe Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done\u201d that productivity advice is broken because it is not changing things at the level of the system (though he then produced another book focused on individual productivity, go figure). In organizations, we are often dependent on one another to complete our work. We are also held to the collective norms of the organization around productivity and performing busyness. Therefore, slow productivity must be a team sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See you again in a couple of weeks!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burkeman, Oliver. 2023. Four Thousand Weeks\u202f: Time Management for Mortals<\/em>. First paperback edition. New York: Picador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gregg, Melissa. Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy<\/em>. Durham North Carolina; London, Duke University Press, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honor\u00e9, Carl. In praise of slow: How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed. <\/em>Vintage Canada, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mountz, Alison, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu et al. “For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies<\/em> 14, no. 4 (2015): 1235-1259.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newport, Cal. \u201cThe Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done.\u201d The New Yorker<\/em>, 17 Nov. 2020, www.newyorker.com\/tech\/annals-of-technology\/the-rise-and-fall-of-getting-things-done<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newport, Cal. \u201cIt\u2019s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity.\u201d The New Yorker<\/em>, 3 Jan. 2022, www.newyorker.com\/culture\/office-space\/its-time-to-embrace-slow-productivity<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newport, Cal. 2024. Slow Productivity\u202f: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout<\/em>. New York: Portfolio\/Penguin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odell, Jenny. 2019. How to Do Nothing\u202f: Resisting the Attention Economy.<\/em> Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odell, Jenny. Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture<\/em>. Random House, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parkins, Wendy and Geoffrey Craig. 2006. Slow Living. <\/em>Oxford: Berg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petrini, Carlo. Slow food: The case for taste.<\/em> Columbia University Press, 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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