Ruthless elimination is my new priority.
“Our default is addition. We add meetings to calendars, layers to organizations, features to products. But the real genius often lies in removing — in creating space, clarity, and focus.”
The more people we try to meet and stay in touch with, the less time we have to nurture deep bonds.
The more “well-rounded” our fitness is, the less likely we are to excel in any one sport.
The more projects we take on at work, the less of our best energy and brilliance each one receives.
Cal Newport, in Slow Productivity, warns about “pseudo-productivity” and “work around work.” The illusion that keeping busy means making progress.
“‘Pseudo-productivity’: the use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.”
When humans worked in factories, productivity was clear: the more units produced, the more productive you were. But knowledge work? We’ve never truly defined what productivity was. We defaulted to “more hours = more productive.” Which was never true.
If I’m not moving my projects forward, no matter how many emails I send, events I attend, or courses I take, I’m not producing value.
The trickiest part of our times is realizing that thinking deeply about things that are worth doing is what defines productivity in the knowledge economy. And yet, on the global level, leaving “thinking time” in your calendar, is still considered some weird quirk of your nature that even a few leaders dare to admit publicly that they do.
Over to your dear reader,
Are the things you are busy with the ones moving YOUR success metrics forward? Do you know what those are to begin with? AND does your calendar have thinking time?
PS Absolutely loving reading “BS At Work: Why so much of modern work is bullshit and how behavioural science can make it better” by James Healy (who we’ll have on Change Wired podcast very soon of course).