On Time: Cal Newport redefines productivity

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

How do we measure productivity? Our default metric tends to be activity. How many emails did you send? How many words did you write? How quickly did you respond to that Slack message? Cal Newport, computer science professor at Georgetown and author of “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout” advocates for a different framework. Rather than thinking about how much activity you have in a day, Cal wants you to consider: how do you work to land at the bigger outcomes and goals? In the second episode of our month-long series about how we make the most of our time, we’re zooming out from hours and days and examining time over the course of weeks. Cal sits down with Jessi to offer strategies for achieving long term productivity, speaking to the importance of quality over quantity, the power of boredom, and the future of technology as it relates to how we spend our time.