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Slow Productivity by Cal Newport 📚

Cal Newport’s latest advice book tackles the question of productivity in knowledge work. Factory work can much more easily be measured and systematized. Newport points out that office workers, writers, artists, and scholars are often assigned tasks and must come up with their own individual system to be productive. These systems are opaque to managers, who end up relying on “visible activity” (which many busy office workers are familiar with) as the proxy for productivity. Add in always-on email and instant messaging apps, plus a global pandemic and people trying to work from busy homes, and you end up with a lot of burnout.

The initial chapters of the book will have many knowledge workers nodding along empathetically, sharing in the sense of exhaustion and overload. Taking inspiration from the “slow food” movement Newport quickly moves into his three solutionary principles:

1. Do fewer things
2. Work at a natural pace
3. Obsess over quality

Each principle gets its own chapter full of tips in how you can step out of the hamster wheel of “psuedo-productivity”, take back your time from your employer, and focus on truly great work. Newport takes a lot of inspiration from classic figures like Isaac Newton, Copernicus, and Madame Curie. (Pretty intimidating for your average cubicle warrior…)

Ultimately, the book is not interested in deeper, critical questions of why we are burning out. Despite calling for a “revolution” in the conclusion, Newton drops some snide comments about Marx and leftists in the text. Challenging the system is not his job. Perhaps expected of a “productivity” blogger, he remains very much imprisoned in the self-exploitative work camp of the “late-modern achievement-subject” (see The Burnout Society by philosopher Byung Chul Han, an overview and link to my review here).

Maybe I am being too “obsessed over quality.” A cynic might say this is a short book that capitalizes on people’s dissatisfaction with their work life and then doles “life-changing” advice between mentions of all his other books (on sale at all fine bookstores! And I admit I would like to get at least one more!). The advice basically boils down to: get really good at something, raise your rates, and lower the amount of time you spend engaging in capitalism. It is burnout mitigation on the level of a corporate mindfulness retreat. But that’s okay. It is better than nothing, and sometimes a reader needs a bit of prodding to be self-reflective, and the book did spur me to think about my own working habits. And though I have my issues, it is much better than other “make your bed”-style self-help books. I enjoyed the first bit and there are a few good nuggets in there. I think it would be a good jumping off point for discussion in a book club or office setting. So if you need something to spark a little rethinking about how you are doing things, this could be a good quick and moderately stimulating read. 3 stars!

In The Hundred Years' War on Palestine Rashid Khalidi takes us through six turning points of modern Palestinian history woven with family and personal history, including his frontline experience escaping Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon War. Khalidi has a long history as an advocate and an academic and writes a highly detailed account with an insider view. He covers the early Zionist movement, the Nakba of 1948, the Six Day War of 1967, the Lebanon War, the Intifadas and the rise of Hamas, giving context throughout as to who the geostrategic players are and how they change.

The book ends in 2017, with Trump making promises for a new deal for peace. Things don’t look good for the Palestinians. Khalidi offers some ideas on how to proceed in a constructive manner, from first principles of equality for both Palestinians and Israelis. There is a lot in the book about crafting a more favourable public opinion of Palestinians around the world, from a few different angles. It certainly presented perspectives new to me. One key argument is that the world cannot afford to have the US continue as sole, self-selected guarantor of the peace process. That is borne not just of the evidence presented in the book, but of what we have seen in the past couple of months.

I listened to an interview with Khalidi on a podcast or on YouTube somewhere right after October 7th. Many people were giving this book plaudits, and since he was so well spoken I thought I would give it a try. I am no specialist, so I cannot recommend this book with any real authority. But I found it very readable, appreciated the occasional personal history elements sprinkled throughout, and came away with some new frames for thinking about the problem. But I didn’t have to read this detailed and complex book to know that they need to STOP.