Tag: “Reflect”

After exploring doing fewer things, Cal Newport’s first principle of Slow Productivity, today we dive into the next one: working at a natural pace. This principle challenges one of the most deeply rooted beliefs in modern work culture: that more hours and constant intensity equal better results.

We live in an era where constant activity has become the visible symbol of productivity. Responding to emails at 11 p.m., being available on multiple communication channels, attending back-to-back meetings, and keeping dozens of projects going simultaneously is perceived as the mark of a committed and productive professional. However, Cal Newport claims (and I quite agree) in his book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout that this culture of perpetual busyness is precisely what is destroying our ability to produce truly valuable work.

We have seen how we can achieve a very high level of control in our life by capturing everything that holds our interest, clarifying what each thing means and deciding what to do with it, and organizing all those reminders so that we can easily access them at the right time.

There are two key elements in self-management: control and perspective. These two concepts interact with each other but are achieved using different approaches.

We have seen how you can transform all the to-dos in your life into a set of perfectly organized reminders in a trusted system. We could say that the first three stages of the GTD methodology workflow form the “organizational apparatus” of the method: