Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

So how do you actually work with your mind and create things of value? What I’ve identified is three principles: doing fewer things,  working at a natural pace, 9

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Meaning one with more variability in intensity than the always-on pace to which we’ve become accustomed.

 but obsessing over quality. That trio of properties better hits the

You’ll inevitably end up underachieving at something, simply because your time and energy are finite. But the great benefit of strategic underachievement—that is, nominating in advance whole areas of life in which you won’t expect excellence of yourself—is that you focus that time and energy more effectively.

2. Counterbalance your work bucket. View work as involving a skill or knowledge that must be mastered. This will cause you to give disproportionate time to your ONE Thing and will throw the rest of your work day, week, month, and year continually out of balance. Your work life is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else

The second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism. The psychology professor Robert Boice spent his career studying the writing habits of his fellow academics, reaching the conclusion that the most productive and successful among them generally made writing a smaller part of their daily routine than the others, so that it was much more feasi