This is my book review on Cal Newport’s book Slow Productivity. Newport is a cishet white male associate professor at Georgetown. He doesn’t do social media and seems to have three kids (at least as of 2018- its hard to find much information about his wife and family, without being a stalker). He has a website that he has been writing since 2007 on “the theory and practice of living and working deeply in an increasingly distracted world.” He might be better known for his book “Deep Work” and books he wrote for students to “hack” college.
He started a podcast during the pandemic.
For me, that is all I think a person needs to know about privilege. Are you a man in a household requiring care tasks who started a podcast during the COVID-19 pandemic? If you know, you know.
Anyways, advice in his book can be categorized into three large categories:
- Do fewer things.
- Work at a natural pace.
- Obsess over quality.
Frankly, I didn’t love this book. It felt like a lightweight read. In the front matter, he concedes that he conceptualized this book differently than his previous hits (Deep Work and Digital Minimalism). He describes a handful of vignettes of people who he considers productive (Bill Gates, Georgia O’Keefe, and Jane Austen), who, like him, were able to be productive in positions of relative privilege. Each were able to leverage narrow minded focus in well-defined fields to be what Newport calls ‘highly productive’. Also- some of these prolific creators existed in different eras.
To be completely honest, I am not sure I have ever related to anyone engaged in knowledge work before 1990. I mean- I might just be viewing everything in the past with rose-colored glasses. But I am really trying to figure out what was so difficult about knowledge work before most knowledge was expected to be accessible 24 hours a day. Or how it was possible to just close an office door and be “out of contact” for large sections of your day. Or having a family with a stay at home wife. Most of everything I have ever learned about a historical figure creator engaged in knowledge work or creative work just convinces me that we might have a lot more cool shit if more people were afforded the privilege to engage in their work without concern about things like cooking and cleaning.
Others have taken Newport to task for the quality of this book- many saying things like, “This could have been a 10,000 word blog post” or “This is just Deep Work combined with his Podcast content”. So, I won’t pile on here. As a woman in academia I am highly attuned to the gendered divisions of labor that still characterize a lot of activities in higher ed. He doesn’t talk about how his approach (to do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and to obsess over quality) go over in his department at Georgetown. It seems that he has been teaching one class a semester (since Fall 2021), and no classes during the summer. He is the is the Provost’s distinguished associate professor, which might come with a course release. He is a director for a degree program at Georgetown, which is probably a lot of work. But, it would seem he has been quite intentional in where he spends time in his work life. Nor how he deploys his advice to take himself to the movies once a month in the middle of the day. He also doesn’t describe much about his home life; how much or how little he contributes to the management of his shared household and the extent to which his partner thinks it is a fair division.
My general opinion is that his advice on productivity comes from multiple vantages of privilege- much of which is beyond what most working mothers can manage in their lives. TBH, I found myself just rolling my eyes through much of the book. I myself don’t have a ton of time to sit and read outside of work- I listened to his audiobook while doing the regular stuff working mothers do, driving to practice, making dinner, getting groceries.
The most useful points I took away from his book were:
- Be sure that I am understanding the distinction between real productivity and pseudo productivity. Pseudo productivity is easy because the tasks take less bandwidth and because they are well-defined. There is a ton of “work” associated with the important work we do that can be distracting of the deep work we need to do. Things like sending emails, making agendas, scheduling meetings, etc. None of this is the actual work we do- it facilitates the work we do. Make sure we understand the difference and do what we can to decrease the amount of pseudo productivity that we engage in. Of course, a lot of this work is still work that needs to be done. Someone still has to create the Outlook meeting invite, send agendas, take notes, etc. In higher ed, female faculty do more advising and mentoring than male counterparts. Newport doesn’t offer any advice on how to handle these tasks. I guess, to just be aware that these tasks will not contribute to the deep work that most knowledge workers need to do?
- Be aware that for knowledge workers, most “projects” come with some amount of “administrative overhead”. Whether it is weekly project team meetings in addition to doing actual work on __________ or following up with clients on contracts, updating websites and contracts, etc. There is the work we are doing- but then there are the activities that make that work possible. And not all administrative overhead is the same. If you have any amount of choice in the projects you participate in, consider how much administrative overhead is involved and let help guide your decision. And, as much as possible, try to quantify how much work each of these projects or responsibilities requires and to balance them whenever possible. So, if there is an annual report that is primarily your responsibility, and it takes a ton of admin overhead meeting with different units and supervisors and getting multiple deliverables from multiple people, etc. that should be balanced with low overhead projects that might not require as much admin activity.
I think point #2 here is where a lot of us march ourselves toward exhaustion and burnout. We take on projects, commitments, etc. without having a full idea of the administrative overhead these tasks entail- both at home and at work. Or, worse, we tend to be relegated to these tasks because of gender, race, or class. So, it’s not just about developing a report or an article- it’s meeting with the project team and keeping everyone on task. It’s not just developing that new service or the program, its determining the scope of that service or program with all the stakeholders and incorporating that scope and getting approval and buy-in, yada yada yada.
It’s the reason why the division of tasks in the home often feels unequal in homes where both partners aspire for equal contributions. Making dinner has a different level of administrative overhead than cutting the grass. Same with paying bills and doing laundry, car maintenance and kids doctor/dental visits. When one partner takes on/has to perform more tasks that have larger administrative overhead, they feel like they are bearing the larger share of household and care labor.
Discussion of author’s own privileged identity (race, gender, class, disability status): 1/5
Discussion of author’s privileged occupational privilege: 1/5
Discussion of author’s contributions to household/family/care tasks: 0/5.
My own impression: Two stars