It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity An Article by Cal Newport www.newyorker.com The central goal of Slow Productivity is to keep an individual worker’s volume at a sustainable level. A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. If you instead enable the individual to work more sequentially, focussing on a small number of things at a time, waiting until she is done before bringing on new obligations, the rate at which she completes tasks might actually increase. Efficiency is the Enemy productivity
Scraps of the brocade of autumn There is a story of Rikyu which well illustrates the ideas of cleanliness entertained by the tea masters. Rikyu was watching his son Shoan as he swept and watered the garden path. "Not clean enough," said Rikyu, when Shoan had finished his task, and bade him try again. After a weary hour the son turned to Rikyu: "Father, there is nothing more to be done. The steps have been washed for the third time, the stone lanterns and the trees are well sprinkled with water, moss and lichens are shining with a fresh verdure; not a twig, not a leaf have I left on the ground" "Young fool," chided the tea master, "that is not the way a garden path should be swept. "Saying this, Rikyu stepped into the garden, shook a tree and scattered over the garden gold and crimson leaves, scraps of the brocade of autumn! What Rikvu demanded was not cleanliness alone, but the beautiful and the natural also. Okakura Kakuzō, The Book of Tea In a state of reverberation wabi-sabi