The true, and perhaps only, way to be truly productive
A modest approach to a lofty goal
A friend of mine, who’s one of the most productive people I’ve ever met, was writing a book, and feeling stuck.
He asked about my writing process, and I mentioned that I never write in order. I don’t start with page 1 and proceed directly to page 250. Instead, I wake up in the morning and write whatever section moves me most that day. I like to follow my emotions, my interest, my sense of intrigue. Then, I polish whatever I’ve come up with, over and over and over again, and weave it all together. This is where my process gets quite methodical - I feel like a human Zamboni machine, slowly circling the ice until it (hopefully) gleams.
My friend’s eyes lit up. He said he would try this. And six months later, he reported, his manuscript was blooming.
I thought about this while reading Cal Newport’s excellent new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.
Slow Productivity opens with Newport recounting an email he received from one of his readers: “Productivity language is an impediment to me,’ this person wrote. ‘The pleasure in thinking and doing things well is such a deep-wired human pleasure…and it feels (to me) diluted when it’s linked to productivity.”
This comment resonated so much that I had to stop reading for a while and let it sink in.
But I would go even farther: I believe that “thinking and doing things well” is not only a “deep-wired human pleasure.” It’s also a spiritual goal.
When we work to achieve excellence or beauty - whether in the form of a spreadsheet, a painting, or a perfectly set table - what we’re really doing is trying to manifest the “perfect and beautiful world” I wrote about in Bittersweet: we’re trying to get to Eden, we’re singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, we’re building the shining city on the hill.
Of course, as Newport says, few jobs lend themselves to such exalted states of mind.
But they don’t have to. We can still steer our ships in the general direction of “thinking and doing things well” - a modest approach to a lofty goal.
Here are my takeaways, from Newport’s book, from the “Slow Productivity” movement, and from my own head: