How to Get Things Done, Stay Focused, and Be More Productive

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Busyness is 'pseudo-productivity': visible activity standing in for real value.

  Cal Newport, a Georgetown computer science professor, argues that knowledge work never developed a clear way to measure output. So workplaces fell back on a crude rule: the more you look busy, the more productive you must be. That rule produced today's busyness epidemic, and he says people got fed up with it during the pandemic, when many started reacting badly to the word 'productivity' itself.

• 02

  If the word 'slow' makes you nervous, that's the problem.

  Mel admitted she has an aversion to slowing down because she is so used to being busy. Newport says that reaction is exactly why he developed 'slow productivity.' The aim isn't doing less with your life. It's doing work you're proud of, spending time with people you care about, and not being anxiously overloaded.

• 03

  Principle 1: do fewer things at once.

  Every yes brings 'administrative overhead': emails, meetings, check-ins. Your hours are fixed, so as commitments pile up, more of the day goes to overhead about the work and less to the work itself. Eventually you're always busy and finish nothing. The key words are 'at once': you can still do lots of things over your life, just not all at the same time.

• 04

  Principle 2: work at a natural pace and stop writing fairy tales.

  We imagine getting the MBA, the house project and a new skill all done in six months, fall in love with that ending, and then fall apart trying. Newport says to give things the time they actually need, maybe one at a time. Looking back, nobody cares how long something took; they just see that it's done.

• 05

  Principle 3: obsess over quality, which isn't the same as perfectionism.

  Caring about how good your work is does two things. Busyness starts to look less appealing, because it gets in the way of good work. And as you get better, you gain leverage and freedom to turn things down, like skipping meetings or, in his case, dropping corporate speaking once the books were doing well.

• 06

  Your to-do list is really a wish list.

  Mel described planning to do 90 minutes of errands in 11 minutes. Newport says we picture everything done and feel good about it, not noticing we just put three days of work into one. The fix is to see how much time you actually have before deciding what fits.

• 07

  Time-block your day: give every task a time slot.

  Each workday morning, Newport fills in his calendar around fixed meetings, for example 9–10 on one task, 10–10:30 a call, 10:30–noon another task. This lets him put hard work in open morning time and batch small errands into a 45-minute gap between meetings. It also stops the constant inner debate about checking email, because email already has its own slot later.

• 08

  When the day falls apart, re-plan at whatever level broke.

  Newport doesn't treat a blown schedule as failure. When something throws him off, he simply redoes the plan for the rest of the day, or at a bigger level if the disruption is bigger. The schedule exists to make you think about your time, not to be followed perfectly.

• 09

  Focus is trainable, like interval training for your brain.

  Newport says he has taken distracted undergraduates to 90 minutes of locked-in focus by the end of a semester. The method is simple: short timed blocks that restart if you glance at your phone, gradually lengthened. In his experience, 90 minutes of real focus gets more done than eight distracted hours. Most people focus best in the morning; he jokes that the 'midnight to 4am' people usually don't have kids.

• 10

  You can't just quit distraction; you need something to fill the space.

  Young people told him they couldn't use their phones less because there was nothing else to do. So Newport now pairs cutting back on screens with building a life worth paying attention to, starting with practicing being alone with your own thoughts.

• 11

  If you feel behind, focus on the process, not the outcome.

  The stories we tell about other people's success, often based on Instagram, are usually wrong. We don't see how hard it was or what they regret. Rather than fixating on an exact result like a number one bestseller, commit to the process of doing good work.