We’re increasingly facing burnout. How is it possible to do work that you’re proud of and not feel like your job is encroaching on all parts of your life? Because it’s no longer you just see me in my office looking vaguely busy, you can actually see every email I’m sending and how active I am in a Slack chat. I could do this on the way to work, on the way home from work, at home, on the weekends. Enough is enough. We’re increasingly exhausted. We have a faulty definition of productivity that we’ve been following, and what we need to do instead is shift our focus onto outcomes.

I’m Cal Newport. I’m a computer scientist and writer. My most recent book is “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.”

So, the knowledge sector emerges in the mid-twentieth century. When it emerges, our best understanding of productivity came from manufacturing. Manufacturing, this is something that we could measure very precisely.  For example, how many Model Ts are we producing per labour hour, going in as input? And we had a number we could look at.  Knowledge work emerges. These type of metrics don’t work anymore. Because in knowledge work, we’re not producing one thing. I might be working on seven or eight different things at the same time. This could be different than the seven or eight things that the person right next to me is working on.

Our solution to this was to introduce a rough heuristic, that I call ‘pseudo-productivity’, that said we can use visible activity as a crude proxy for useful effort. So, if I see you doing things, that’s better than you not doing things. Come to an office and we watch you work. If we need to be more productive, come earlier, stay later. We’ll just use activity as our best marker that you’re probably doing something useful.

More and more of our time is focused on performing this busyness, which means less of our time is spent actually doing things that matter.

So, what’s the solution? Slow productivity is a way of measuring useful effort that is now much more focused on the quality things you produce over time, … … as opposed to your visible activity in the moment, and I define it to be built on three main principles.

The first is to do fewer things. Now this idea scares a lot of people when they first hear it, because they interpret do fewer things to mean accomplish fewer things. What I really mean is: do fewer things at once.  We know this from neuroscience and organizational psychology that when you turn the target of your attention from one point to another, it takes a while for your brain to reorient. The things you’re thinking about over here leaves what’s known as ‘attention residue.’ This is a self-imposed reduction of cognitive capacity, so you’re producing worse work. Even worse, it’s a psychological state that is exhausting and frustrating, so the experience of work itself just becomes subjectively very negative. So, what happens if I’m working on fewer things at once? More of my day can actually be spent trying to complete commitments, which means I’m going to complete them faster. And probably the quality level is going to be higher as well because I can give them uninterrupted concentration.

The second principle is to work at a natural pace. One of the defining features of human economic activity for the last several hundred thousand years is that the seasons really matter. There was migration seasons when we were hunting; there was planting seasons – we were planting; and harvest seasons when we’re harvesting; and seasons where neither of those activities were going on. We had a lot of variety throughout the year in terms of how hard we were working. I think in knowledge work, if certain times of year are more intense than others, this will lead to overall better and more sustainable outcomes. So, the principle of working at a natural pace says it’s okay to not redline it fifty weeks a year, five days a week. We can have busy days and less busy days. We can have busy seasons and less busy seasons.

The third principle of slow productivity is to obsess over quality. And what this means is you should identify the things you do in your work that produce the most value and really care about getting better at that. Any quest towards obsessing over quality has to start with a … perhaps pretty thorough investigation of your own job. And then once you figure that out, start giving that activity as much attention as you can. For example, invest in better tools so that you can signal to yourself that you’re invested in doing this thing well. I did this myself as a postdoc. I was at MIT, didn’t have a ton of money at that time, but I bought a fifty-dollar lab notebook. And my idea was this is going to make me take the work I’m doing in this notebook more seriously – and it did. So, something about having this more quality tool pushed me towards more quality thinking.

So, this idea that you want to slow down, that you want to do fewer things, that you want to have a more natural pace, this becomes very natural when you’re really focused on doing what you do well. You begin to see all of those meetings and the email and the overstuffed task list not as a mark of productivity, but obstacles to what you’re really trying to do. If you are embracing these principles, a few things are going to happen: … the pace at which important things are finished is going to go up; the quality of what you’re producing is going to go up; and the happiness is also going to go up. This is going to become a much more sustainable work environment, and you’re going to be doing the work that’s going to make you better.
(End)

• Burnout (noun): extreme tiredness or illness caused by working too hard or doing too much.
• To encroach on something (phrasal verb): to gradually remove or take control of something.
• Vaguely (adverb): to a slight degree, slightly.
• Slack (noun): a messaging and chat app used by businesses.
• Enough is enough (phrase): something you say when you want something to stop.
• Faulty (adjective): something that is not perfectly made or does not work correctly.
• To shift (verb): to change.
• An outcome (noun): a result or effect of an action, situation, etc.
• To emerge (verb): to begin to exist or appear.
• Manufacturing (noun): the business of producing products or goods in large numbers.
• Precisely (adverb): exactly.
• Labour (noun): practical work.
• Input (noun): something that is put into a system, e.g. energy, resources, so that it can work.
• A metric (noun): a system for measuring something.
• Rough (adjective): not exact or detailed.
• A heuristic (noun): a method of problem solving that involves trial and error and enabling people to discover things themselves.
• Pseudo- (prefix): pretended and not real.
• Crude (adjective): simple and not skilfully done or made.
• A proxy (noun): something which can be used to judge how successful something is.
• A marker (noun): a symbol or object that gives information about something.
• As opposed to (phrase): rather than.
• A principle (noun): a basic idea or rule that explains how something works.
• To interpret (verb): to understand something in a certain way.
• To accomplish (verb): to finish something successfully or achieve something.
• At once (idiom): at the same time or immediately.
• Neuroscience (noun): the scientific study of the nervous system and brain.
• To reorient (verb): the change the aim or purpose of something.
• A residue (noun): something that is left after the main part has gone or been removed.
• Self-imposed (adjective): decided by yourself.
• Capacity (noun): the ability to do something.
• Subjectively (adverb): in a way that is based on personal beliefs and feelings, not facts.
• A commitment (noun): something you must do or deal with that takes your time.
• Pace (noun): the speed at which something moves or happens.
• Defining (adjective): very important.
• Migration (noun): the process of animals travelling to a different place, often seasonal.
• To redline (verb): to work or operate at or above the maximum limit.
• To obsess over/ about something (verb): to think about something all the time.
• A quest (noun): a long search for something or an attempt to do something difficult.
• Thorough (adjective): detailed and careful.
• To figure (something) out (US, phrasal verb): to find the solution after lots of thought.
• A postdoc (noun): someone doing postdoctoral (after a PhD) work.
• To push (someone) towards something (phrasal verb): to make someone more likely to do or achieve something.
• Overstuffed (adjective): filled with too many things or too much stuff.
• An obstacle (noun): something that stops progress or makes it more difficult.
• To embrace something (verb): to accept and start doing something enthusiastically.

In this text, there are some interesting examples of advanced present simple and continuous forms.

The present simple is normally used to talk about:

• • General truths: ‘Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.’
  • Something that happens regularly: ‘She plays the piano every day.’
  • Future schedules: ‘The train leaves at 6:30.’

The present continuous is normally used to talk about:

• • Actions in progress at this moment: ‘She’s talking to her sister now.’
  • Temporary actions: ‘We’re staying with friends until we sell our house.’
  • Organised future plans: ‘I’m flying to Paris tomorrow night.’

State verbs: state verbs describe a state, not an action. They aren’t usually used in continuous forms:

‘I really like this film!’   I’m really liking this film!   ‘I agree with you.’   I’m agreeing with you.

State verbs can relate to:

• • Feeling and emotions: dislike, hate, like, love, prefer, want, wish
  • Possession and measurement: belong, have, measure, own, possess, weigh
  • Senses and perceptions: appear, be, feel, hear, look, see, seem, smell, taste
  • Thoughts and opinions: agree, believe, doubt, guess, imagine, know

Some verbs can have a stative and a different active meaning:

‘He has 4 dogs.’ (state – possession)   ‘He’s having a great time.’ (action – having a good experience)

Other uses of the present simple and continuous include:

The present simple can be also used for:

• News headlines, instructions, and plot summaries

‘Government raises taxes again!’   ‘Press the green button.’   ‘The detective follows the clues and catches the thief.’

• Anecdotes: to make stories and actions more immediate and engaging

‘So, I walk into the café, and guess what? I see my old school friend after ten years!’

The present continuous can also be used for:

• Describing a change or development, complaints and annoying habits (with always):

‘Technology is advancing rapidly.’   ‘He’s always interrupting me when I speak!’

Examples in the text:

• We’re increasingly facing burnout: ‘we’re increasingly facing’ … the present continuous is used here to describe a change or development in our lives. The verb ‘face’ is usually state verb that is used here in a continuous form to emphasise the worsening situation.
• We have a faulty definition of productivity: ‘we have’ … the present simple is used here with the verb ‘have’ to describe a state (possession), rather than an action.
• … the knowledge sector emerges in the mid-twentieth century: ‘the knowledge sector emerges’… the present simple is used here in an anecdotal sense to talk about a past event to make it more engaging and immediate.
• … do fewer things at once: the present simple is used here as an imperative, to give instructions.

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/c1-grammar/advanced-present-simple-continuous

https://www.englishpodcastscollected.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Big-Think-The-lost-art-of-accomplishment-without-burnout.pdf

https://www.englishpodcastscollected.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Big-Think-The-lost-art-of-accomplishment-without-burnout.docx