“Don’t underestimate the amount of time professional idea-people spend thinking,” says Cal Newport. In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he argues that we should use a craft-centric instead of a productivity-centric approach to our work. A productivity-centric approach is geared toward checking items off a to-do list; a craft-centric one involves deep thinking and deliberate practice. While the productivity-centric route is much more alluring (redesigning your website is less painful and ambiguous than, say, grappling with a new theory), it’s the craft-centric mindset where you will experience the most growth. And over time, the growth will be profound. “My working habits are simple,” Ernest Hemingway famously said, “long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.”
This craft-centric approach ties in perfectly with the emerging topic of slow productivity (prompted by recent books like How to Do Nothing and Four Thousand Weeks). In this YouTube video, Cal explains the 3 elements of slow-productivity (which I wrote on a notecard and taped to my computer):
1. Do fewer things
2. Work at a natural pace
3. Obsess over quality
“If you seek tranquility, do less,” said Marcus Aurelius. “Doing what’s essential brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.”