In a world where business leaders and employees are talking about personal wellbeing and work-life integration, it’s easy to see why the “slow productivity” movement has gained attention. Popularized by Cal Newport in his 2024 book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, the movement promotes three principles: do less, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.
On the surface, these principles sound ideal, and many of the examples Newport uses in his book show how practitioners of slow productivity can produce great work without burnout.
But slow productivity presents a challenge to leaders who still need to deliver results. It’s one thing to suggest that freelance artists or musicians adhere to slow productivity principles, but leaders who manage knowledge workers need to know that their direct reports can do the work they were hired to do on time with consistently high quality.
At the same time, no one wants workers to experience burnout, which can lead to engagement challenges such as the “quiet quitting” trend of a few years ago.
Here are three ways leaders can balance the tensions between slow productivity and business results.
3 Ways to Get The Most Out of Slow Productivity
Encourage better focus.
Newport’s first principle, “Do fewer things,” actually means to do fewer things at once. As he points out, the idea that humans can competently manage multiple complex tasks at once—multitasking—has been debunked by neuroscience. To accomplish the deep work expected from most knowledge workers, those workers need the time and energy to achieve deep focus without interruption.
But deep focus can be tough to find, whether working from home or in the office. In fact, a 2023 Microsoft study found that the most active users of its software spent the equivalent of two full days per week either in meetings or reading and writing e-mails.
Leaders can encourage better focus from their direct reports by giving them permission to manage interruptions better. Set reasonable guidelines for responses via instant messaging, e-mail, or phone, and don’t expect people to respond when they aren’t supposed to be working. Let direct reports manage their own participation in meetings as much as possible; many meeting-heavy organizations tend to overschedule their people without clarifying the expectations for their participation.
Focus on outcomes, not outputs.
Many ideas and metrics around productivity emerged during the industrial era of the early 20th century. When factory work dominated the economy, it was natural to measure productivity by outputs—how many cars came off the factory floor, for example. And in a factory or manual labor setting, it was equally easy to see who wasn’t contributing to the overall project; those who were standing still wouldn’t be employed for long.
But old productivity rules don’t work as well in a service economy. Approximately 100 million people are employed as knowledge workers in the US, representing about 60% of the workforce. In that environment, outputs don’t necessarily contribute to the overall outcome. Take e-mail or instant messaging. Prolific communicators may be visible, but they may not be contributing to the overall business results.
A better approach is to look at overall outcomes. According to Boston Consulting Group and Flex Index, firms with fully flexible work policies—that is, fully remote—grew their revenues by 21% on average from 2020 to 2022. That’s four times greater than at less flexible firms.
When outcomes are good for the bottom line and employees are happy, it shouldn’t matter where the work gets done, how many messages are sent, or how many keystrokes are registered on a computer. Leaders can shift their focus from strict assessments of productivity outputs and look instead at the overall business results.
Build trust.
People have a wide variety of work preferences and habits beyond simply the location of their desks. Some employees are most productive and creative first thing in the morning, while others hit their stride later in the day. Working parents may need to start a bit later every day to ensure their kids make it to school or daycare, or they may need to take kids to afternoon activities and then return to their desks later in the evening. Still other people might want to build flexibility into every day to pursue educational or personal development goals.
While these varying preferences do potentially pose communication and meeting challenges, they can also present leaders with an opportunity to build trust on their teams. By establishing some minimal communication guidelines up front, everyone can share the same expectations and build a culture of accountability.
No matter where or when direct reports work, trust between leaders and their teams is key to productivity without burnout. When leaders and teams share a purpose and enjoy a strong foundation of trust, everyone wins.
Slow productivity doesn’t have to derail business results; in fact, it can encourage both business results and people results. People who have the freedom to produce their best work usually will, and slow productivity principles can encourage both a healthy bottom line and a stellar employee experience.
Self-check:
- What is one way we can reduce the number of things team members are expected to do at once?
- Do we have a meeting-heavy or message-heavy culture?
- What is one way we can reduce meeting and message expectations?
