Review: Slow Productivity

 I usually enjoy Cal Newport's books, even when I disagree with them. Slow Productivity is no exception. I learned a lot. For instance, despite Virginia's Woolf's depiction of Jane Austen writing in her sitting room in between visitors, Newport reveals that her literary output during that time was next to nothing. She only got a chance to write her great novels when her family came into money and deliberately went into social seclusion so she could write!

Effectively, individuals in creative fields (scientists, writers, artists) should take the long view of their work. For instance, he mentions that Madam Curie immediately after her insight that the radioactive potash she was studying likely contained a new element, went for a summer break of hiking and other outdoor activities with her family. (Instantly, this debunks the famous linkedin/social media meme that the ideal vacation is only a week long and anything more is wasted)

Now, one issue with the book is that so many of the case studies and examples are from people who were already effectively independently wealthy. (Not surprisingly, most great scientists in the 16th to 19th centuries were effectively independently wealthy because only the independently wealthy could spend their time studying something with no immediate payback!) Da Vinci might not have been independently wealthy but he also had many wealthy patrons that bankrolled him or commissioned work that did not have to be delivered for years.

One modern example is Andrew Wiles, who as a tenured professor had the luxury of minimizing his teaching load and was already working on related work when he realized that he might be the person most suited to proving Fermat's Last Theorem. I enjoyed the example but the rarity of Wiles' position as a tenured professor would make your heart sink.

Another example was the musician Jewel Kilcher, who deliberately negotiated her million dollar advance down so that her record label wouldn't lose patience with her if her first album wasn't an immediate breakout success. That's great, but it's just a reminder of how much less patient the commercial music business has been since the days of Fleetwood Mac, whose first 17 albums failed to make any impression before they produced Rumors.

Finally, the book is largely directed at individual contributors (so for instance there's no mention of Fleetwood Mac). That's as it should be, since Newport as a Professor has probably never had to manage an industrial sized project to completion. I suspect that one big facet of industrial creativity in output has to be secrecy. It's much easier to fail fast and fail frequently if your failures are private rather than public, and to do so as part of a large enterprise you cannot expose all your bets to the public. On the other hand, many have observed that most of Google's experimental projects have completely failed with nothing to show for it and no institutional learning, so it's quite clear that it's not simply having unlimited resources will help you achieve big, long term success.

I learned quite a bit from this book. I think you should read it. But if there's one lesson I had to distill from this book is that you should be patient with yourself. It takes many years for even the smartest most successful people to achieve their careers. Don't expect to be an overnight success.