Author: Cal Newport
It is important to remind oneself time to time that speed is not the only thing that to be factored in, in order to complete to-do lists and in aggregate, to reach goals. Deadlines, they may help some to get things done, but in the process of doing that it fries the brain wires. Don’t give me a deadline and see how I make the workflow smooth, give me one and see how many scrambled action items I tick.
Deadline-oriented work is essential for fast-economy and for us who are in it, no argument can be held against that. But to some extent, it extracts the joy out of the work itself. On a day-to-day basis, if I’ve too many things on my plate the quality of the work starts to grade down. This is not essentially unacceptable as long as a certain threshold of quality is maintained, but honestly, do we want to spend our non-infinite days just to barely surpass the threshold? I think the answer is known - ‘No, what other options we do have?’.
The idea that is laid out in this new book of Cal Newport is not a swiss knife to ensure joy in our work-life. It does not illuminate us with some ultra-new ideas too. But it is more like a refresher on how ‘check and balance’ between speed and quality can be maintained.
The core theme can be boiled down to - ‘Stick to a small pool of doable things, work on them with mono-focus with no rush, and maintain some form of measures to prevent procrastination’. As a long-time listener of Cal’s podcast ‘Deep Questions with Cal Newport’, most of the ideas like - pull strategy, productive walking, time-blocking - are not alien to me. The book was more like an organized hub of all of Cal’s ideas on healthy forms of productivity.
The read was smooth, it will be, even for someone who is not a productivity geek like me. No non-linear narrative was hiding behind the words (I would not have complained though), it was a plain traditional non-fiction book.
Rating: 4 out of 5