If so, what do you think about it?
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Bought it. Reading it. Honestly, having a bit of trouble really getting into it. Maybe I’m just tired of productivity content?
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Similary to Cindy, I’m currently reading it and having a hard time getting into it. It’s well written though like everything Cal does, just not what’s speaking to me at this moment in my life. I think I need Cal to become a hard-core fitness expert, that’s what I’m looking for!
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I’m with you. I’m productive and I’ve lived and worked long enough to have a system what works well. I’ve stopped reading books and articles on productivity. I’ve moved on to other things. 
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Honestly it just feels like people churning out productivity crap these days just to buy a quick buck.
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I am who have just finished reading his latest.
I am also tired of productivity content but Cal Newport is the one who doesn’t have that “you should” or “you must” attitude. Slow Productivity is something like Four Thousands Weeks responding to the pseudo-productivity nowadays.
Digital Minimalism is my first book I read. I remember at that time I also consider another book: Make Time – which is totally not I want to get.
Here’s an interview with Newport on the Huberman lab podcast. I just started to listen to it, not sure if they go in the new book in detail.
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I’m not sure what you mean, but I read Making Time and found it useful.
Currently reading this and enjoying it, but I’ve also been incorporating Slow Movement ideals into all aspects of my life since Carl Honore’s book on the topic back in 2004.
Cal’s earlier book, Deep Work, was pivotal to helping me shape my work life into something functional and organized. Although I also liked his book, Digital Minimalism, I was already doing about 90% of what the book offers as strategies to help reign in one’s digital life.
YMMV
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Or we’re tired of the same old productivity content? These books tend to repeat the same things. If there’s a genuine insight, its usually drowned in a lot of filler. That’s why I was asking. I checked the table of contents and it seemed a bit vague to me.
I think the issue is if you listen to his podcast regularly then, or at least since the pandemic, Slow Productivity is the main thread of discussion of the book, and thus probably doesn’t seem necessarily new.
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He’s 20 years late to this party, I’m afraid.
Yeah, I get that. I’m glad some of the examples were new. I was really hoping for the Deep Life book he was talking about first. If that’s still on the table.
I enjoy his writing but I think me missed a couple of opportunities. For example he went a little far into the World Without E-mail trying to get people to add projects to a list where a white board might have been more applicable. I think the piece that spoke to me and the best overall argument was how every project brings overhead tasks so having fewer at a time means you can actually get more done in the long run.
Two things after just finishing the book. First, the author John McPhee is used as a reference or example of a slow worker. I am a JM fan so that was a treat … even if I knew the stories presented. Second, overall I agree with the concepts outlined having discovered most if not all of them over the years myself. So while there wasn’t in the main anything earth shattering in the materials presented there are some nuances I think I will use to my benefit. I will note the tractor beam holding us in our accustomed patterns, and which this book suggests we break, is powerful and difficult to break. This book makes it sound almost easy to do. This is a common problem in the genre.
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I started reading productivity books for a project in 2020. Newport’s Deep Work is one of a handful of books I thought were worth reading on their own merits.
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I’ve read it, and it is excellent.I’d highly recommend it.
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Update: I recently read an earlier book of Cal’s, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, on a bit of a whim and was inspired to pick Slow Productivity back up afterwards. I just finished it this evening and am really glad I did. He does state up front that he’s really targeting his ideas towards knowledge workers with large amounts of control in their lives to change how they work, and I’m not sure how I would implement his ideas in my own professional life right now. That said, it’s worth a read if anyone is struggling with “busyness” fatigue.
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