Can I Smash the Game with Slow Work? I Think I Can.🔨⌚

Published: Mon, 07/04/22

Slow and Steady, Wins the Race.

Anonymous

In a recent appearance on the Tim Ferriss podcast, Cal Newport discussed his developing concept; Slow Productivity. Listening to Cal expand on his germ of an idea made me start thinking about not just productivity but work itself. I’m a naturally slow worker, so I began to wonder if that gave me an advantage I never knew I had. What better person than a highly-organized, prolific computer scientist, academic, author, and speaker to steal a fragment of an inspired idea from, that I can apply to my life? So I started looking at Slow Work.

Go with the Slow.

Hustle culture has been popularized by some influential voices over the last ten years. And to be truthful, the hustle and grind philosophy has some ways of operating that I find helpful, but I know myself enough to switch off if I am heading towards overwhelm. I wasn’t worried as I explained earlier, one of my superpowers is working slow. Much of the bluster and bravado of early rising, working twenty-four hours a day and having every second accounted for just didn’t impact me even if I wanted to be a fully paid-up advocate of the hustle. I had promised myself long before this time never to beat myself up for failed attempts in my life. Why should I? My slow work was doing fine.

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Slow work is just a different beast.

I think you’ll be more productive if you slow down and take a more considerate approach to your work and goals. The quality of your output will be much higher if your pace is measured but consistent.

Busy does not equal productive.

The benefits of slowing down are numerous. Studies have been done on the benefits of a wandering mind. It seems that daydreaming makes us more creative, better at problem-solving and better at coming up with innovative ideas.

The Netherlands - the Jamaicans of Europe, have a practice they call 'Niksen', which means that they intentionally take time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless.

They Schedule time to do nothing on purpose!

Damn, what a concept!

I never rush my manuscripts, and I no longer believe I’m not being productive if I’m not pounding the keyboards. I don’t drag out my work either; I ship when the time is right because the sooner I get it in your hands, the better. I’m consistent and write daily, but I’m not fixated on word count. A day focused on research, organization, reading, or the gym can be just as useful to my work as the number of words I put down.

I write my stories with pen and paper at the beginning of my process. What could be slower than that? For now, the completed work must be transcribed from numerous notebooks into a word file. Every time I look at my writers scrawl, I’m improving on the work at each rewriting stage, even if it’s a transcription. I can’t rush that process even if I want to.

Working at a slower pace prevents burnout: and allows you the luxury to look at your creative work with fresh eyes, which is invaluable when your process isn’t cluttered with strict deadlines and a checklist.

Slow work asks us to step back and think about our long-term goals.

Learn to love the process.

Slow work does not make you lazy; it makes you effective and encourages us to work hard with measured intensity towards our goals. By doing slow work, we may come to a greater appreciation and enjoyment of the creative process and of the work we have chosen for ourselves. We may find our sense of fulfilment doesn’t live in the outcomes; it lives in the process. And for me and many like me, that’s good news.

Go slow, baby!