Is Slow Productivity the Secret to Accomplishment Without Burnout?

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. That's a big key because I see so many leaders burning out. And that's what drew me to this book, this amazing book, Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. You can see I've got a bunch of tabs because I made a lot of notes and I read the whole book in about a week. I've already sent it to two of my VIP clients. I was like, guys, you got to read this because I could see them on the edge of burnout. So today I'm going to break down Cal's brilliant new book. And why it needs to zoom towards the top of your list if you're a high achiever who wants to make the most of your life, but also not burn out and have a fulfilling life outside of work, outside of the external accomplishments. Okay. But before we go further, I want to break down why I'm going deep into this book and why it's so important that you pay attention to this video and you share it with some friends that might be on the edge of burnout. Because when you are in the frenetic pace of modern work, guess what? You are now also shortchanging your potential for achievement. Because what happens is when you're in that frenetic state, which I'm going to break down further in the video, then your amygdala is literally locking in and you're in a fear or stress state. And raise your hand if you're in a little fear or stress state. Well, guess what? Most of us are, right? So, if you're in that state, guess what? Your amygdala is now in the driver's seat, which means your prefrontal cortex and other parts of your brain and your nervous system are not easily accessible. In fact, you actually lose capacity. You start shrinking your ability to think critically, creatively, and strategically. And it takes a lot to zoom back out of that. And I've seen some of my clients have been totally stuck and they're executives, they're leaders, they're making millions of dollars. and they have been stuck in a fight or flight state sometimes for months, in one case, uh, 2 years, all the way since 2022, since spring 2022. So it was almost 30 months at this point. So I'm going to break down the 3 principles of slow productivity that Cal talks about, but I want to hit on a little bit more of the why. But before I do that, make sure you click a like button, subscribe, and share this video with a friend if it resonates. And if you know someone that is on the edge of burnout and that is just grinding and going for it, but also not really, not really accomplishing a whole lot, meaning they're, they have so much more potential than their external results would indicate. So before I go further, let's talk about business because he starts, Cal starts the book out with discussing business. And I want to read a quote here. The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. By Lily Tomlin. So that's not actually from the book, but I thought it was a perfect quote for today. And let's break down further this definition of productivity, though. This is where Cal gets into the juicy details. So we've been living by this faulty definition based on the industrial model of like, you know, if I just add an extra hour to the factory, then we're going to produce another hour worth of goods or an hour. Like if you think assembly line, Model T or Ford, Hey, let's, you know, if you're making 300 cars per hour, just add an extra hour and you added an extra 300 cars. Well, that works for the agricultural model, that works for the industrial model, but it does not work for highly cognitive activities like complex thinking, like strategic thinking, that you need the spaciousness. Ultimately, it needs 3 main ingredients. I'm not going to cover those just yet. You got to stay tuned. But these 3 main ingredients, as you incorporate them into your life, it actually creates the space for you to do this deep work, enter into flow state, which Cal unfortunately does not zoom into flow state. But, when you enter into flow state, you have this zenith of potential, meaning you're 500% more productive, you're releasing all these positive neurochemical cocktails, and people who are in flow state experience the greatest measures of life satisfaction. All right. I have other videos on that, how to reverse engineer flow state. So, definitely check those out. But, today's tyranny, which Cal does go into, Like, think of it like this, and some of these are my words, all right? But today's journey, you get sucked into email threads, into text messaging and phone calls, meetings. I call it meeting masturbation. It's just like you're all like doing group masturbations and meeting meetings and you're just having way too many meetings. Okay, not a good feel, right? And then we end up being Zoom zombies, all right, where we're just, We're almost like at the end of the day where we got this glaze in our eyes that we have just suffered through so many Zoom meetings and we're slack. We've just been glued to this, you know, screen, whether on our phone or a laptop or a desktop, been glued to a screen over and over. We're sitting in meetings and we actually don't get any work done, right? Because this old paradigm was built on productivity, which is measured by activity. Well, if you're measuring your Slack messages and measuring your phone calls and measuring your meetings and measuring your emails, feels productive because you did so much, you were so busy, but did you actually move anything significantly forward? Well, in today's model of cognitive thinking, you're not. You're often not. You have no space for the real knowledge work or very little. So we're going to talk about how to break that down, how to reverse engineer and how to activate more space for you to get the real work done that is memorable. Because no one's going to remember how many meetings you had today. No one's going to remember how many Slack messages you responded to. How many— send out 100 emails, that might— you're busy, might, but it may not be productive. Might be counterproductive because you didn't get anything meaningful done. So Cal calls this pseudo-productivity, which is using visible activity as the primary means of accomplishing actual productive effort. Pseudo-productivity. And again, because it's based on the old industrial model, which was based, you know, we need crisp, qualitative, easily measured notions of productivity in the agricultural or industrial model where, hey, how many widgets are we making? How many boxes are we making, etc.? Right. But all this leads to burnout for today's, let's call it, white-collar worker or knowledge worker. Okay, Steve, I'm going to give you this quote from a guy named Steve, a strategic planner. And he says, that's where the burnout really hurts. When you want to care about something, but you're removed from the capacity to do the thing or do it properly and give it your passion and full intention and creativity because you're expected to do so many other things. Is that you? You're expected to do so many other things. So your capacity to give something really meaningful, really substantial, that would move the needle, would make a difference and would make a dent in the universe. Is diminished so much because you're so freaking busy. I love this quote from a VA named Myra. My clients are very busy but are so overwhelmed by everything they want or have to do that it becomes very difficult to recognize what the priorities are for them. That's a problem. I don't know if you're catching the drift here. Okay, so how do we start getting time back? And what does Cal say about this? Well, one of the things he talks about is how we have to ruthlessly protect space to create memorable work because space will get sucked up. Okay. And this is where firm boundaries— I'll call it Power of a Positive No, which is another great book. But you can just think of it. I'm saying no to this so I can say yes to this higher, much more valuable thing. I use it a lot with my clients around their work, work boundaries and home life. Because if you like, I have a 3-year-old and if I am totally absent of her life because I'm saying yes to work, work, work, work, then by the age of 12, she doesn't care about me, right? Because she's off doing her own thing, and then she's gonna feel like a distant father. I'm saying no at 5 o'clock, uh, 6 out of 7 days. I am saying no to work so that I can say yes to father time, and so I can be present and connected. So, uh, that's more important than having another meeting, have another prospect call, whatever it may be, right? Um, Cal goes into also this concept that began in the early 2000s around slow food and slow sex and slow life, which is allowing for the spaciousness to enjoy, to savor in this sustainable pace instead of the frenetic Americanized version of life. And when you're living in that frenetic pace, back to what we were talking about in the intro, when you're in this frenetic pace, this unconsciously induces fear. Activates amygdala, which means you lose access to the deeper thinking parts of your brain like the prefrontal cortex. You're like that hamster on a wheel that can't get off. You're running really hard, but you're not really going anywhere because you're shuffling. You're just in and out, in and out, not really moving anything of substance forward. And unfortunately, in today's work world, there's a lot of expectations around that. I've been a boss or I am a boss, but I have had many employees where sometimes I'm like, hey, are you showing up? Are you doing this? Are we clocking in your 40 hours? Well, what the heck is 40 hours? Like, anyway, where did we get some of these measurements when it's really measuring outcomes? We want major outcomes, right? Major progress. And, and sometimes you need more spaciousness. So let's talk about what slow productivity is and the 3 core principles. I'm going to finally give those to you. Slow productivity is a philosophy for organizing knowledge work work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner based on the following 3 principles. First, do fewer things. Second, work at a natural pace. Third, obsess over quality. Okay, so all 3 of those together create what he calls slow productivity. By the way, his other book, Deep Work, is phenomenal as well. He's got several others, but that is my other favorite one where it's highly related to what we're talking about today because you do the deep, meaningful work that makes a dent in the world. For example, Jane Austen, Famous author wrote classic books like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice. Well, when she was living in Bath, England, she was so busy and so frenetic with meetings and entertainment and obligations and all this. She was still working on her books, but she hadn't released anything. She was making notes in every moment that she had. Guess what? She didn't have enough spaciousness and she was tired and she was burdened with business. So burdened, chained equals zero notable work. And terribly unhappy Jane as well. A lot of my CEO clients, when they are buried with busyness, buried with business, they are unhappy. And we have to start creating space and start recognizing and giving the power back so that they can see, oh, I can actually create more space. Unburdened with business, Jane ended up having her create her classics. You know, when she moved to a little tiny cottage or not a tiny cottage, but a tiny sleepy town called Cheltenham, she had a cottage over there, she transformed English literature and came out with her classics. All right. That's when she wrote her big books like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, which if you're a dude who's married to a woman that's feminine, chances are you probably have read those or maybe not read them, but you've been forced to watch a movie or two on those. They're usually actually pretty good. So let's break down the principles a little bit more. First one, do fewer things. How do we do this? So I'm gonna give 6 principles on the do fewer things, or 6 steps. First, limit projects. Say no more often. This is the power of a positive no. I'm saying no to this so I can say yes to that. Tim Ferriss has a great book, "The 4-Hour Workweek." I've read it 4 times, gonna read it again. Talks about stop doing list and start doing list. But the more important list is the stop doing list, and doing an annual stop doing list. Other part, second piece of that, of limiting projects I have in my book— I should have brought a copy of my book, but we'll flash it on the screen here— is The Genius Within. So when you know where your areas of gifting, then you want to operate and activate and use those gifts as often as possible. And in fact, you want to find out where are you desperately in, meaning where are the roles and responsibilities only things that you can do. And chances are those are like your $5,000 an hour activities. One of my clients, Alex, she's CEO of her business, she crushes it. She's a founder of a brand called Copy Posse and really good YouTube channel. Take a look there if you're a copywriter. But she is diving in. We're coaching and working on, hey, where's your $5,000 an hour activity? And then reducing the fanaticness of getting in Asana and getting in all the other details and getting the things done for her, which are creating offers, creating product, like creating new ventures in the sense of her existing business, new offers that can serve her clients and teaching and doing strategic work. Okay. Second thing after you're limiting projects and saying no is productivity termites. So these are the small tasks, communication burdens, the stacking of all these responsibilities. And they seem little, but they start stacking up and they become an energy suck or energy leeches. So you want to minimize the back and forth, the endless meetings, the no decisions, the meetings with no decisions, and the meetings that could be 15 minutes instead of 1 hour, and also the meetings that aren't even necessary. So you start deleting some of these tasks. Okay. And, and you can also do some other things like number 3, which is spend money to buy back time and focus and energy. This is where you're using software, you're using VAs, you're using other— like delegating to other employees or team members, or just deleting it permanently. Like just saying, no, that is not in my scope anymore. That is a $20 an hour activity and it doesn't bring me joy. Okay, so you start automating systems, procedures, taking things off your plate. And this is where your stop doing list— lots of times my CEO clients, We'll do a life and death list. Okay. We'll talk a little bit more about that in here a sec, but then actually that's the sixth one. I'll break it. I'll break it down now. All right. Life and death list. You write on one sheet of paper, all the things that bring you a death and all the things that bring you life on another sheet. And then you just go forward and delete and delete and delete, move those things off your plate and then move into your life, into your plate. Or onto your plate the things that bring you life. All right. But we'll come back to that a little bit more. So fourth one, do pull instead of push. Pull instead of push in terms of your activities and responsibilities. So Cal goes deep into this. So minimizing the amount of work in queue. And I found that with a lot of my creative employees, like when I have creative graphic designers, video editors, if I give them too many projects on their plate, they get overwhelmed and they just melt. They crumble. But also for me. And I want to minimize the amount of big projects because then I start getting procrastinating or I start procrastinating because I feel overwhelmed. I got to do this. I got to do that. I got to do this. And you just have this inner pressure, which again, amygdala takes control. We don't want the amygdala taking control because that's fight or flight or freeze. And it also releases cortisol in your nervous system. Nope. Not what we want. We want peace. We'll talk more about that in principle number 2, which is working at a natural pace. So push-pull instead of push, which means you limit amount of stuff in your queue and you can literally have boundaries like, you know what, I'd love to get to that, but my next availability to start on a project like that is next Wednesday at 4 PM. So I'll block that off, then I'll get started or whatever, right? So you're just putting your schedule in it, but you're also limiting the amount of open loops, open projects, open folders. Okay. Fifth one, boost focus. And this is where a lot of the other work I do where I'm clearing trauma, literally giving back more parts of your operating system, more parts of your internal thinking process where you're not having to manage all this trauma and background junk. All right. So as we clear out trauma, it's like, boom, you feel freer, you feel lighter in your nervous system, your body, your mind can relax and you have more access to more of you and more of your power, more of your strength, more of your wisdom, more of your insight. So that's why clearing trauma out is one of the biggest things that I talk about a little bit in my book, The Genius Within, as well. But then the second part is reverse engineer flow state. Check out my great video on that, by the way. And also Steven Kotler's book, The Art of Impossible, so good. But you can reverse engineer flow state. My video has the clearest breakdown of that. I'm not going to go into that in detail right now. But when you're in flow state, you're 500% more productive. Again, the hours, it's typically before noon. And you feel great when you're in flow state. Third thing is take nootropics. I've got a brand here, Genius Consciousness, no related to me. I wish I owned it, but it's a phenomenal brand. And the nootropics feel great. I have Olympic athletes that I've talked— basically, I've worked with their coach. They started using them and they loved it. And they use it as well as their coach. All right. So, those nootropics are terrific. And the last thing is do a life-death list. And I'm going to encapsulate this with a story from a guy named David Perry. He's CEO of a film company called Five Stone Studios. And we worked together for about 7 or 8 months in 2021 and 2020, I believe. And actually, it was 2021 and 2022. And he was really stuck when we started working together, but we started with a life-and-death list. And as we broke down his life-and-death list, we realized that almost— he just had a record income year, was making great money. His company was in a great spot, but he was ready to get out. And he was not doing great. He was not happy with it. We start breaking down his life and death list. Guess what? Almost, right, most of his week was filled with things that brought him death. He was in this administrative hell, and he did not like it. He was ready to burn down the business or abort, abort, abort, get out, right? And then we started deleting the death list, and we started adding things back into his life list and reverse engineering, protecting his sacred energy spaces, you know, those peak emotional hours, which again for him was before noon, moving meetings to afternoon, protecting those for creative, strategic, flow state, highly productive, locked in, focused time. Guess what? A month later, he was so happy. He was enjoying, he was happiest he'd been in years in his business and was flourishing again, was starting to really enjoy his work again. And it was just because we made those major shifts. All right. Second thing, principle number 2. So this principle number 2 from Slow Productivity: work at a natural pace. Aristotle identified deep contemplation as the most human and worthy of activities, which is about sustainability, right? Slow Productivity rejects perpetual urgency because truly very little is urgent. We think everything's urgent. Oh, the house is gonna burn down. Oh, if I don't get back with this client right now, then they are gonna go with somewhere else or whatever. Right? So we have all this urgent energy, which is frenetic, which means less access to your creativity. Your brain is like shut down because you're, you're afraid. You're acting out of fear. It's like there's a saber-toothed tiger chasing you down and you got to run, run, run. No, gotta breathe. I've been guilty of that too. Like in the whole productivity movement in the '90s and 2000s was like, how do I get more done? How do I get more done? How to squeeze 10 more things into my 1 hour, blah, blah. Right? Well, Cal's going from a different standpoint. All right. He's about how do I work at a natural pace that allows the spaciousness for truly meaningful work, memorable work to come into play. Okay. I'm going to add another piece. His book, Powerful Engagement, which is about managing your energy. And it comes from a sports psychology standpoint, which is about energy exertion and energy renewal. Exert, renew, exert, renew. Like the earth, we have day, we have night, we have spring, we have summer, we have fall, we have winter. Day and night. So, we need that downtime. For example, when we sleep, when we get good quality sleep, our brain categorizes things and heals and restores and optimizes and clears out toxins. Same for our body and it heals and restores. We get low quality sleep and we just exert, exert, exert, Eventually we can burn out. And I have had many clients that were literally teetering around the edge of burnout, nervous system breakdowns. Get them usually in 2 to 4 weeks, we'll get them all the way back. And then we'll start recalibrating habits and patterns to create sustainable success. And this is also working from a larger macro view of your work trajectory. For example, Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the stories Cal talks about, He spent 7 years working on his first blockbuster show, In the Streets, I think is what it's called. But it was an amazing show, right? Turned into a great movie as well. And then obviously led to Hamilton and a few other great shows. And he's, he's a major hit now, right? Musical genius. But he spent time soaking and marinating and cultivating it. And you also can look at the difference between McDonald's, you know, their hamburgers, fast food, if you even call it real food, versus, uh, like a 5-star, you know, Michelin star restaurant, right? Well, that food is— the steaks are marinated, the prep work has been done, the research has been done, they get the freshest, best ingredients and the best chef, and they're not rushing you through it, right? You're not eating, scarfing down that food in 10 minutes. You might have a 3-hour dinner. Back to the slow food thing, catching my drift? All right. So, so now Cal talks about how to simplify your workday. You want to talk about grouping activities according to likeness or according to types of work. So if I'm going to email, I'm going to batch it. Hour in the morning, 30 minutes in the afternoon, something like that, right? Protecting your meeting time, sacredness around that. Protecting your deep work time for your deep work, like your thoughtful, highly productive work time that is making the biggest difference. All right. So you want to protect ideally 50% of your workdays from meetings and have 1 to 2 days of no meetings so you can do the deep work. So thinking seasonal, exert, renew, time to sow, time to harvest. Guess what? Your customers also have cycles too. Pay attention to those because you ultimately can dictate and get in rhythm with them and you'll have a better flow. Awesome. You have more control over your workflow than you think. Okay, embrace that and acknowledge that. All right. So as you start thinking about this, create space for this deep work. But remember that you are in charge of your work. Even if you have a job, you have more control than you think. So principle number 3, let's go to this one. Obsess over quality. I love this. Jewel, famous singer. She was 19. She was in San Diego, I believe. And she saw a coffeehouse that was kind of looking like it was about to go out of business. And it was. And she talked the manager or owner into keeping open for 2 more months. She just asked her, hey, if you could keep this open for 2 more months and I perform, let's see if we can partner up together. I'll keep proceeds from the show. You keep all the food sales, food and coffee sales. Well, sure enough, she starts selling out. And months later, that coffeehouse was jamming. All right. Then she became a hit, right? Local hit. And the record executives came down and they offered her $1 million in bonus as a 19-year-old. Million-dollar bonus. Amazing, right? But she did the math. To recoup $1 million in bonus, they'd have to sell a huge number of records right away. And she said no. She actually turned them down. Like, crazy. What are you doing, little girl? What are you thinking? Well, guess what? She was smart. She recognized, hey, if I didn't do this million-dollar bonus, then if I don't sell a huge number of records right away, I'm on the streets again. They don't want to work with me and I've lost my shot. So she said nope. She negotiated a different deal that wasn't a huge upfront bonus and allowed her to hone her craft because she knew she would have to hone her craft over the next 3 or 4 or 5 years and build a fan base and She needed it. She didn't want to race through it. She didn't want to be frenetic and fighting for survival to meet this huge expectation. So she created spaciousness. And guess what? Then a few years down the road, she has her mega hits and she goes off and her career just soars right from there. So quality ultimately demands that you slow down. Slow down. It's okay. The world will still keep spinning, but sometimes you might need to slow down. All right. Next one is you want to decide what not to do. Okay. Steve Jobs said deciding what not to do is just as important as deciding what to do. Okay. And that was when he came back to Apple and he had massive problems. Right. And what did he do? He took all these product lines, all these computers, like I think they had like 14 versions of iMac at one point and said, you know, We're just going to have 4 versions of the computer and it's going to be in 2 categories, personal or business or personal and professional, laptop, desktop, laptop, desktop. Right. So 4 main boxes. And that's when they came out with the new revised iMacs and they crushed it and they rebuilt the company in 1997. Right. One of my favorite stories, he walks around with Phil Knight at this time. I don't think he had reaccepted the CEO role. Even though they wanted him to. And Phil's like— and he asked Phil, what would you do? And he's like, Steve, you got a lot of product here. Most of it's crap. So you might want to get rid of the crap. And so Steve just cut out like two-thirds of the products, right, and simplified it all down so they could do focus. All right, so obsessing over quality. And now I want to tell a few other stories. Michael Crichton, famous novelist, he was actually an MD as well at Harvard. I think he was finishing up his MD there, but he started working on his craft as an author while he was there. And before he graduated, he had already published and successfully published and produced several books, and they were starting to gain traction. So he tested his concept. He tested this other venture before he fully released, and that gave him confidence to say no to this medical career path that he worked so hard and studied and all that. Obviously, it still informs book— great books like Jurassic Park. Timeline. I love that one. Many others. I used to read 4 or 5 of his books every year. Well, he's terrific, but he created space instead of like saying, you know, as Imelda Cowan was talking about, hey, he's working on his books when he was in college, knowing it's going to— while he's in grad school, knowing it's going to take a little while for him to get a mega hit. So give yourself time like Jewel did, space to get a mega hit, space to, you know, that side hustle. Let that side hustle build up. Before you fully jump all in, right? You know, you hear that burn the boats metaphor, a little misnomer. Hector Cortés. Well, guess what? They didn't burn the boats while they were at sea. They burned the boats when they were on the land. So you got to think of— you don't burn your boats while you still need them. Okay. So Hector Cortés, when he landed and invaded, I think it was Aztecs, around 1500. I don't remember exact time, but he was already on dry land. All right. So think of like, I'm going to build up these other things until I'm on dry land and I can sustain my life. All right. I want to mention a couple other things. My friend Tyler Ward wrote this amazing book or amazing article called Busy Isn't Respectable Anymore. Click the link there. I think you would definitely enjoy that. Check out these books. I can't recommend Slow Productivity enough. It's one that I'm consistently giving my top clients. And then lastly, go ahead and check out the flow state videos, subscribe, share this with someone else. And then if you want to reach out for any other questions about activating your highest and best potential, I have a little application to work with me one-on-one, Rewired 101 VIP. Click that link and I'd be glad to chat more and see if it's a fit. Have a great day and much love.