Cutting the clutter
You’re feeling burnt out as you ponder yet another day of hellish juggle.
There’s so much on your plate at work that you have no idea how you’ll finish it all, but afterwards you’ll have to hare home to take care of children, housework, and admin before collapsing into bed.
Your mind goes into a tangle – then an infuriatingly cheerful “Ping” signals the landing of another WhatsApp message. It’s yet another work request, more urgent than the last.
How will you cope?
Truth is, you can’t. Your brain is short-circuiting because it’s not wired to do so much at once, and you’ve become unproductive in your overload. Tomorrow will probably be the same.
Sound familiar? To many of us it will, given our driven and schizoid work culture, exacerbated by the immediacy of digital communication. But is there a different way to function? Cal Newport, author of “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout,” believes there is. We agree.
We’ve had a little fun weaving a story in the knowledge that each of us has both characters within us. If you’re not keen for a little entertainment, feel free to skip to the tips that follow each section.
The hamster wheel
“You’re so busy. Aren’t you exhausted?”
Oliver the owl peers sideways at Hamish pedalling manically on his hamster wheel. The bird perches on a tree near the windowsill where the hamster cage is lodged. “Well yes, but I wouldn’t want to be like you, just sitting around, you lazy oaf,” says the rodent rudely. “What on earth are you doing?”
“To tell the truth, not much,” drawls the owl. “The things I’m good at and that are in my control, I do those. Like hunting for rodents – but not you, Hamish, I promise. Can’t eat my friends, and I’m in a mood for making friends.
“But for a better answer to your question: right now, I’m evaluating the data, the sounds of my prey scratching far away, and the strength of the wind.”
The hamster looks sceptical as the owl begins to reminisce. “You know, when I was young, I tried to be a hummingbird for a while: they’re so pretty and fast, and I was madly jealous. I thought that if I just practised harder, I might become that light and elegant and get some sweet nectar too – but no matter how much I practised, my wings just wouldn’t flutter like that, my beak just broke the flowers as I lunged into them clumsily, and the other owls just screeched with laughter at me. It was mightily embarrassing.
“I had to accept that I’m built for distance, not vibration, and as I said, for hunting small creatures. What are you built for?”
Hamish looked at his hamster wheel and around his cage, wondering. Suddenly, all his activity seemed entirely pointless, so he opted to ignore the question entirely and hurl another one at the owl.
“You focus on just one thing, for all this time? But what if it doesn’t work? You could fail, you know.”
“Simply telling your boss that you’re doing to do less won’t cut it,” says Cal Newport. We need a more sophisticated approach.
The owl closes his eyes. “Certainly, that’s a concern. But I’ve got a better chance of success doing what I’m naturally good at, than trying to do everything else too. There’s only so much that I need, you know. The main thing is that I’m happy. Are you happy, my little friend?”
Hamish feels a little more relaxed about the absurdity of his own life after Owl’s hummingbird confession and opts to be frank. “Well, no, I’m an anxious mess and you picked that up, you cunning bird. Happiness, hmmm… You reckon that’s the point of it all in this mad, mad world we live in?”
Hamish looks around at his hamster wheel. Owl just closes one eye and looks sideways at him briefly. No reply needed. Hamish gets the point. Oliver’s world doesn’t seem mad at all and there is no reason why his little cage should be mad either, really.
Tip no. 1 on slow productivity: do less.
We may feel as frenetic as Hamish and long for simplicity and focus, but it’s not easy to achieve. “Simply telling your boss that you’re going to do less won’t cut it,” points out Cal Newport.
We need a more detailed, sophisticated solution. And laziness is not the answer. “We DO like to do things,” Cal explains in one of his YouTube videos. “Nothing makes us more miserable as a species than doing nothing for long periods. The problem is not activity, but too much of it.”
Today, most of us maintain long lists of obligations and more keep coming in: emails, text messages, and conversations, creating a condition of “chronic overload”. This causes several problems, the first being a short-circuiting of the parts of our brain dedicated to making long-term plans, something us humans can be very good at.
This makes us anxious and miserable.
Second, we go into “overhead spiral”, a steep escalation of the time needed to plan each of these activities, including meetings. Our time becomes overloaded with “overhead”. It’s OK to have one or two projects needing this, but when we have 25, the “overhead time” takes up all the time we have.
We need to schedule time every week for “deep work”, during which we can focus completely. We need to work smarter, not harder, delegating what we can.
The answer, Cal says, is to become clear on our function, so that we don’t take on too much.
We must take some time to evaluate the information we need and allocate the hours and days for doing the work.
We need to schedule time every week for “deep work”, during which we can focus completely.
It means working smarter, not harder: delegating what we’re not good at to others where possible and, we believe, using tools like automation or AI as they become available to work better and more efficiently. “A scheduled approach of doing less will actually increase your productivity of value over time,” says Cal.
This will make us happier and more fulfilled. And we’ll get good at those activities for which we have a natural aptitude, for a far greater sense of satisfaction.
In the winter
It’s snowing now, and Oliver looks sideways at Hamish again. He’s still on that wheel. Although sluggish and fat from eating too much during the summer, he’s forcing himself forward and upward.
“It’s winter, you crazy rodent, shouldn’t you be hibernating?” the owl asks. “You’ve been eating so much that you’re fat enough now, you know.” He licks his beak just to tease the little creature, who is too irritated to fall for it.
“Humph! Can’t relax, feel far too guilty,” he says, cutting sentences short in his stupour. “Not snowing in my cage anyway, y’know.”
The owl simply tucks his head under his wing to keep warm. His feathers and circulatory system are adapted to regulate his body temperature, helping him to conserve energy. He’s waiting for nightfall when he’ll be able to hunt. He’ll catch less food now than in summer, but he accepts that he must roost by day to recharge his batteries.
“Things that seem urgent are seldom important, and things that seem important are seldom urgent.”
“Hamish just can’t find his rhythm,” he ponders, a little sad. “He doesn’t know that during some seasons he’ll get a huge amount done, and at other times, less, and that that’s OK. He doesn’t know that things that seem urgent are seldom important, and things that seem important are seldom urgent.
“He’s too anxious even to trust himself – and that his strong work ethic will ensure everything works out over time. Or maybe he’s simply got an over-developed sense of importance. Who’s he trying to impress anyway, with that incessant wheel-running?
“Perhaps that artificial light in the room is the problem – it’s always on, never a break. My poor, tired little friend!”
Tip no. 2: work at a natural pace
For most of human history, people were hunter gatherers doing what Cal Newport calls “skilled and important work based mainly on food acquisition and child-rearing, at a natural pace.”
We might have spent all day on a hunt, but rested in the intense heat of the day and whenever else it was too hot or too cold to work. There was a natural flow to each day, and our productivity ebbed and flowed with the seasons.
These days, too, working at a natural pace and in a natural flow unleashes our creativity, improving our focus, the quality of our work and our enjoyment of it. Mad activity might seem productive from the outside, but it isn’t. Focused, thoughtful activity, working at a natural rhythm, is productive.
It is inevitable that we will get an enormous amount done on some days and in some seasons, and at other times, less.
Sifting through garbage
Hamish gleefully pulls in a tangle of tinfoil, fabric and even bits of coloured plastic that his owner has fed between the bars as an offering of entertainment. He starts burrowing the colourful bits into his nest. Then he nestles down – only to jump up when a hard bit of plastic prods him.
He stares at his nest in dismay. It’s an utter mess. “What am I doing?” he wails, then bursts into tears.
“Playing with garbage, that’s what,” muses Oliver to himself, wise enough to hold his tongue. Perhaps Hamish will learn from his mistakes. Mistakes are a great way to learn, he remembers, thinking of all the times he blundered into the ground as a young owl, repeatedly missing his prey before learning how to hunt skillfully. He remembers how it felt to be the butt of others’ taunts, although those lessened as his skill improved.
Painstakingly, the hamster starts sorting through the mound of garbage that his nest has become; feeding the little bits of plastic and tinfoil back between the bars and keeping only the soft stuff. It’s slow work. But eventually he finishes and settles, tired, into his nest.
“There you go, little friend. Well done,” murmurs the kind owl.
He ponders the importance of a good nest, and quality in all he does. For a good meal, he must still listen intently to gauge the fattest mouse to kill by the volume of its sound relative to its distance from him (owls experience a jungle of sounds, which they can hear up to 10km away). He has an ordered approach to hunting, to conserve his energy for maximum benefits: first listening, then gauging distance and assessing barriers blocking his prey, then assessing the strength of the wind, before launching an attack.
He’s clear on this process because he has had to develop it over time to stay alive, learning from and observing his elders very carefully. Care over every detail is crucial for a precision hunter.
“I’m so glad I’m not a scurrying animal, all that pointless rushing about,” he thinks to himself, then realises that Hamish, who can’t fly, probably loves scurrying and that’s OK. He is a hamster, after all, that’s what he’s best at.
“Mistakes can be celebrated as stepping stones, for they give us the data we need to do more meaningful work on the next attempt.”
Tip 3 on slow productivity: obsess over quality
It is wise to discern those tasks that add the most value to our projects.
Then, we need to gain the courage and develop the skillset to convince ourselves and those around us not to waste energy on tasks that do not contribute value.
We do well to realise when a job is done and leave it be, rather than tinker at it ceaselessly. For mere hardworking humans like ourselves, to expect perfection is cruel! And foolish.
Mistakes are not bad and should not be feared when made with good intentions. They can be celebrated as stepping stones, for they give us the data we need to do more meaningful work on the next attempt.
Postscript: freedom
We’re not finished with our fable; here’s the ending:
As spring approaches, Oliver feels a surge of joy and fresh energy. He can’t bear Hamish’s confinement and pointless existence any longer. The bird ducks through an opening in the window and with the care he so enjoys, lifts the latch on Hamish’s cage and opens the door. Then he flies back to his tree.
The hamster looks up in astonishment. “Promise you won’t eat me?” he asks. The owl’s eyes crinkle up in a mock threat and Hamish, reading him well, takes the risk. The little creature bounds out of the window, across the garden and road, into grasses on the far verge and behind a mound of sand where he will be hidden from human view.
He burrows furiously, digging a hole. When it’s deep enough, with a rounded cavity at the end for a nest, he stops, panting, and turns around. He is astonished.
Up above is a beautiful blue sky with clouds drifting lazily across it. A tree’s branches dip into view in the wind.
A scurrier by nature, Hamish’s efforts have been for a real purpose this time. He sniffs the fresh air. Soon, it will be time to look for some seeds to eat, and he’ll do that with utter focus.
But now for a nap.
Source: Dolphin Bay
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