From backpack to bookshelf: Books every emerging leader should read

Book 2: Cal Newport's Slow Productivity

I have always been fast. At walking. At speaking. At breathing. For years my parents and doctors thought I had asthma because I was constantly out of breath. One doctor finally suggested that perhaps I simply was not taking the time to breathe deeply enough.

That fast pace followed me into the workforce. I quickly demonstrated an ability to get many things done quickly, and just as quickly earned a reputation for being very capable in an environment where good work meant fast responses, immediate action, and constant busyness.

It was largely because of the team I managed that I began to understand the need to slow down. Not just for myself, but also for them. Several months into leading a high-stakes, high-visibility portfolio where we constantly felt the need to prove our worth, it became clear that if we did not rethink what accomplishment looked like, burnout was inevitable. My quick breathing was no longer just constraining me. It was constraining the team.

Enter Slow Productivity.

Newport makes a compelling case that our current system is built on a flawed definition of productivity, what he calls “pseudo-productivity.” We have normalized and applauded busyness as evidence of value: fast email replies, a visible green icon on workplace chat platforms, back-to-back meetings, long work hours. Even in sectors once known for work-life balance, this has quietly become the norm.

What is particularly interesting is that this shift did not emerge simply because organizations suddenly began valuing busyness. In agricultural and industrial contexts, productivity was relatively straightforward to measure. Bushels harvested, units produced, hours worked on a factory line. Output was tangible, countable, and visible, which meant managers had a concrete way of assessing contribution.

The challenge arose when work became primarily cognitive. In knowledge work, what exactly are we measuring? One academic publishing seven papers versus another publishing four tells us very little if we ignore advising doctoral students, leading a department, mentoring junior colleagues, or shaping long-term strategy. Much of the most valuable work is iterative, collaborative, and unfolds over time, resisting neat quantification.

Newport’s argument is that once these traditional output measures stopped fitting the realities of knowledge work, organizations were left without clear guidance on how to evaluate and manage performance. In the absence of concrete metrics, visible activity became the default proxy. If we cannot easily measure meaningful output, we measure responsiveness, availability, and motion. Pseudo-productivity, then, emerged less as a deliberate distortion and more as a managerial response to ambiguity. The problem, of course, is that what is easiest to see is not always what creates the most value.

The reality is that I had lived this system myself, priding myself on speed, responsiveness, and keeping everything in motion. As a manager, I had subtly reinforced those same signals within my team. We were efficient, visible, and constantly busy. But motion is not the same as progress, and activity is not the same as impact. It was only when I began to question these assumptions that Newport’s approach of “slow productivity” began to make sense.

He proposes an alternative definition of productivity, grounded in three principles: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality. On the surface, it sounds simple. In practice, it is quietly radical.

While the book offers many practical suggestions on how to implement this alternative approach to productivity, my team and I embraced two strategies that made a tangible difference.

Make other people work more

The premise is straightforward. If someone assigns you a task, they should invest effort before it lands half-baked on your desk.

Newport suggests what he calls the reverse task list (p. 91) wherein you maintain a public task list organized by major work streams. When someone assigns you a task, they add it themselves along with the necessary background information. This creates transparency around workload and shifts some responsibility back to the requester.

Our team adapted this, proactively sharing our full list of active work with our assistant and senior directors. When new requests came in and capacity was full, we asked the requester which existing task should be deprioritized. That question alone changed behaviour.

We also created a templated set of clarifying questions that accompanied incoming requests. Often, instead of returning with completed answers, the task simply disappeared. It turned out that many “urgent” requests were not that urgent after all.

This seemingly unremarkable strategy revealed something unexpected to me. What often feels immovable is sustained by unchallenged assumptions. We weren’t shirking responsibilities, or declining tasks, we were just being smarter about how we handled them.

Implement “small seasonality”

Newport draws on the lives of writers, scientists, and artists who worked intensely but also deliberately rested. Importantly, he acknowledges that many benefited from privilege and financial independence. Still, he argues, the broader point predates modern privilege. For most of human history, work was seasonal (p.139). Intense periods were followed by slower ones. Knowledge work has flattened that rhythm into a constant hum of urgency.

He argues that while factory floors and frontline roles may not allow for seasonal flexibility, those of us in offices (most of us actually in cubicles) often have more agency than we assume.

Our team could not take entire seasons off. But we introduced what I think of as micro-seasonality. Slower weeks. Meeting-free days (Newport suggests Mondays). Intentional pauses between major deliverables. Not as indulgence, or laziness, but as strategy.

The resistance I encountered when I spoke about this book was telling. Friends, especially teachers, often dismissed the ideas as unrealistic. Their skepticism underscored Newport’s argument. We have internalized busyness so deeply that slowing down feels irresponsible, even when exhaustion is evident, and burnout at our doorstep.

I was not immune. I worked late nights, skipped breaks and treated most matters as urgent. It’s easy to blame the system, and systems do bear responsibility. They shape incentives and expectations.

At the same time, systems are sustained by individual choices. When I began aligning my actions with a slower definition of productivity, doing fewer things at a reasonable pace and doing them better, the world did not collapse. Deadlines were met. Outcomes improved. And I stopped spinning (much to my family and team’s relief).

Slowing down: A work in progress

Slow Productivity helped me to start redefining success. Not as frantic multitasking, but as sustained, strategic impact. As a leader, protecting your team’s energy is not secondary to performance. It is central to it. Really, if I’m being honest, I think it’s your main role.

What I now see more clearly is that pseudo-productivity is not just inefficient. It is exclusionary. It rewards speed over reflection, visibility over depth, and constant availability over boundaries. That has implications for who advances and who burns (or self-selects) out.

A bit of a contradiction myself, at my core, I have always preferred doing one thing at a time. That instinct is what drew me to pursue a PhD, a process that demands slow thinking and deep focus. Around the same time I read this book, I began running more seriously. I am still a very fast walker. But I am an incredibly slow runner.

It turns out that slower, at least in some areas of life, allows me to breathe.