In today's high-velocity digital landscape, where teams are inundated with meetings, emails, and ever-growing to-do lists, the quest for pseudo-productivity can often lead to burnout and subpar results. However, the principles outlined in Cal Newport's book "Slow Productivity" offer a revolutionary approach that aligns seamlessly with the needs of a forward-thinking group.
By embracing a slower, more deliberate pace, we have cultivated a work environment that not only safeguards the interests of our clients but also nurtures the well-being of our dedicated team members. This isn't about reducing output; it's about enhancing the quality and impact of what we produce.
The book illustrates how many notable figures have impacted our lives in remarkable ways, focusing on the considerable amount of time spent on producing works of high quality. For example, it took Jane Austen years to write her novels, which, thanks to the effort and time invested, are now regarded as masterpieces.
Consider Jane Austin she worked for decades on quality lasting works that affect generations of people.
Here's how the core ideas for the book "Slow Productivity" have affected us and how we are currently implementing them through the prism of our online digital world with the goals of making our team's long-term goals to stay relevant and sustainable in a knowledge-based workforce:
Do fewer things.
We're striving to reduce the small obligations into a manageable workload. In the digital online space, this can be hard. However, setting realistic expectations when working on projects that achieve the same results with less engagement has become a must. To do this we have implemented the following principles.
- Understanding a project's scope and setting achievable goals and functionality in advance to reduce customer and team interactions.
- Finding ways to replicate or duplicate commonalities projects.
- Manage the expectations with stakeholders regarding timelines and what can be delivered.
- Create a large amount of time for our team to work without interruptions.
Additionally, we have found that rather than letting simpler tasks that consume time and cognitive attention intermingle throughout the day, creating structured allotments is beneficial. Our daily strategy is to set specific times aside for these smaller but necessary activities, examples of these tasks are emails, Slack messages, engaging in social media interactions, and attending essential meetings.
Work at a natural pace.
Don't rush the customer's needed deliverables and allow them to be resolved sustainably. This can be hard but finding ways to block our time and minimise distractions when working is advantageous. Our team have stopped engaging in small work allotments and turning off unnecessary applications that are not needed for outcomes that require deep knowledge results to be done at a natural pace. Our team closes or doesn't attend the following when working:
- Allow only certain Slack alerts.
- Set Email alerts to mute.
- Unscheduled Meetings.
Also, stopping to plan our larger long-term goals including well into five years has become important as well. For example, if we find the team has found a way to optimise workflows, eliminate unnecessary procedures, and unneeded interactions to assist in creating more opportunities for deep knowledge work that can be done at a natural pace. This becomes a priority and time is allocated to complete those optimisations.
It's important to know it may take longer to complete something at the start than you expected. However, working at a natural pace and making those changes does help maximise the next principle.
Obsess over quality.
This was an interesting part of the book. Making sure that our quality is high even if this means missing out on opportunities in the short term gives a knowledge worker more freedom and value in the long term. It does foster several advantages. As we've focused intently on what's important, we've established a set of values that we believe help our customers and ourselves which are mentioned below.
- Correctly delegate and distribute work within the team according to their abilities.
- Making sure we invest time in learning and growth opportunities to stay motivated and engaged.
- Test our deliverables against a predetermined standard that can be moved into other projects.
- Allocate time to automate repetitive tasks and address pain points for the customer, our development and build processes.
Incorporating the three principles from the "Slow Productivity" book into our workflow has created a more serene, organized, and ultimately more productive online presence.
By doing fewer things but doing them exceptionally well, working at a natural and sustainable pace, and obsessing over quality, we are starting to deliver profound results. We would strongly recommend your team spend some time reading this book as it has become a valuable asset to our organisation.