Already the author of seven books, Cal Newport’s eighth book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, is about doing less—though he seems to be self-aware of this irony. In the acknowledgment section of Slow Productivity, Newport thanks his wife for “putting up with all the sacrifices involved in having a partner with a troubling addiction to writing books.”
An MIT-trained computer scientist and current associate professor at Georgetown University, Newport has become an authority on the subject of productivity. In his latest book, he traces the history of measuring workers’ output and the rise of knowledge workers’ stress and burnout. As an antidote, Newport proposes what some may argue is an oversimplified solution: Simply do less.
By focusing on fewer tasks at once, Newport argues that workers can minimize administrative overhead and produce more sustainable results. But standing in the way of this is what Newport calls “pseudo-productivity,” or the “frenzied dance of electronic busyness” that many office workers are forced to perform by leaders who don’t know how else to manage workers.
Fast Company spoke with Newport to explore why we still don’t have a good way to measure productivity in the modern world of work—and whether it’s practical, or even possible, for workers to do less.
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