#note/sourcereview/article | #note/sourcereview/book ## What is the thesis? Burnout in knowledge work is a combination of daily overwhelm that comes from our way of having work pushed on us beyond our capacity (by the inside and outside! we participate in this) combined with the inability to live our values at a reasonable pace. ## Am I convinced and why? Partially, I think he makes better arguments in [A World Without Email](https://calnewport.com/a-world-without-email/) about how to create better systems to work in, and I personally believe it's harder to change oneself to being rational in an irrational system then it might be to change the system. Both are challenging and important. ## Summarize the argument _Slow productivity is a set of rituals and values that help structure a rational way of working in knowledge work in an organization while still maintaining progress towards big and important things. The mantra is: "do less, work at a natural pace, focus on exceptional quality."_ ### Do less The essentials of "do less" come from [[🐓 Idea Farm/3 Inbox of ideas/Deep Work|Deep Work]], [[GTD Methodology]], and [[lean management philosophy]] and contain elements of best practices from both. 1) Reduce the overhead of working in a team - reduce unnecessary organizing overhead by having office hours as an open and reliable time to connect with people and solve problems that could be email messes 2) Pull new work, both from your team and from your own backlog - Have a reliable place to put work before you are ready to work on it that functions as a "holding cell" - [[pull don't push]] 3) Cultivate on daily rituals that support deep work - Focus on one project per day to let your brain go deep - A project is anything that takes more than 1 step/session - Weekly Reviews to keep yourself focused and keep everyone else updated - my current [[Weekly Review Template]] 4) Be a trusted teammate to deliver high quality work - [[trust comes from transparency]] - be transparent when you take on work and update your partners if you aren't making the expected progress ### Work at a natural pace ### Focus on exceptional quality ## What is the other side of the argument? ## What else do I wonder about? ## Action ## When do I want to stumble across this? ## Source: Newport, C. (2024). _Slow productivity: The lost art of accomplishment without burnout_. Portfolio/Penguin. ## References, Quotes, Ideas ```dataview table file.mtime.year + "-" + file.mtime.month + "-" + file.mtime.day as Modified from [[ ]] and !outgoing([[ ]]) sort file.mtime desc ```