Does stress leave you feeling exhausted, numb, or unmotivated? Burnout happens when stress becomes your boundary, when you only say “no” once you’re already overwhelmed. To address burnout, Slow Productivity (a great book by Cal Newport) has some strategies, which have been working for me.
So, in this post, I’ll tell you about the plan I made, what I learned, and some practical skills you can use to manage burnout at work. And I’ll share 3 essential strategies I learned from the book Slow Productivity by Cal Newport.
Cal Newport on Burnout and Knowledge Work
So how did burnout become such a problem for so many people? It has to do with our shift from industrial labor to what Cal Newport calls “knowledge work”.
It’s helpful to understand the history of work so we can implement some of the routines that ensured our ancestors didn’t reach burnout.
So first, we’ve got hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers would have moments of high intensity (hunting), and then long moments of downtime.
Farmers used to work seasonally. They would work really hard during the planting season and the harvest. But during the summer and winter they would take breaks, rest, or hunt. This gave them space to rest and restore themselves.
Then, when we switched to industry, factory pay was determined either by how many widgets a person produced or how many hours they worked. Seasons didn’t affect the work anymore, so employees could show up from 9-5, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. There wasn’t much room to breathe.
Do you see where this is going?
Today, most of us are knowledge workers. We modern workers are engaged in education, healthcare, finance, running teams, parenting. Most of us produce output that can’t be measured with grain in the silo or widgets on the shelves.
So, as we’ve moved from concrete productivity, employers and workers needed some way to estimate productivity. We moved to measuring hours worked, which looks like office activity: how many meetings did you attend, how many emails did you answer, is your computer mouse moving during the day? And now, employees and their bosses equate busy-ness with productivity.
The Hidden Truth About Burnout
This backfires, badly, because the busier you are, the less creative you’re able to be at work. The creative and caring part of you just dies a little bit. The secret fuel of burnout is this mindset: using stress levels as your boundary.
So how will you know when you’ve worked enough? How will you know when you’ve done a good enough job as a teacher or nurse or parent or business owner? How will you know when it’s okay to say no to new requests, to add on a new project. Or to let go of one more good thing you could do for your children, or as a content creator, etc.?
Here’s what Cal Newport says is the key to understanding burnout:
“In the modern office context, knowledge workers tend to rely on stress as the default heuristic. This explains why knowledge workers feel vaguely overloaded all the time, and why we’re so vulnerable to collapsing into full burnout when pushed by unexpected disruptions.”
Cal Newport, Slow Productivity, p. 62
It’s like saying “How many sticks do I add to the fire? Until I can’t handle it any more. Until I run out of air.”
How do I know when I’ve added enough to my plate? How do I know if I can say no to something? When I am so anxious I can’t breathe any more.
In other words, It’s only when we feel on the verge of overwhelm that we feel like it’s safe to say “no” to something. This guarantees that you’ll remain permanently on the edge of tipping into burnout. The secret fuel of burnout is not having too much to do, it’s that you use “stressed out” as your decision-making strategy. I will add more on until I feel too stressed out.
“It’s true that many of us have bosses or clients making demands, but they don’t always dictate the details of our daily schedules. It’s often our own anxieties that play the role of the fiercest taskmaster. We suffer from overly ambitious timelines and poorly managed workloads due to a fundamental uneasiness with ever stepping back from the numbing exhaustion of jittery busyness.”
Cal Newport, Slow Productivity, p. 115
So for me, I always felt that pull of “I should be doing more, I should be making better videos, I should be spending more time with my kids, I should be replying to more comments, I should be learning more therapy skills, I should be exercising more and eating better.” And the only limit to what I felt like I should be doing was my own physical energy levels.
Using stress as your limiter guarantees that you will burn out. It’s literally the underlying belief that primes you to burnout.
You can be just as productive, make just as much money, and make even higher quality products without using “the edge of stress” as your deciding factor of when to say no. Let me share with you 3 awesome strategies from Slow Productivity that have been really helpful for me to manage my workload without burning out.
Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity Strategy #1: Do Less Stuff
Doing less stuff doesn’t mean that you will be less productive. Some of the most productive people in the world had long periods of rest between working. Newport shares the example of Marie Curie, who in 1896 was furiously working in her lab, running experiments involving pitchblende. She was just about to make a huge discovery that would lead to her being awarded two Nobel Prizes…and then she went on a two-month vacation with her family.
This is counterintuitive. Why would you leave your work? Wouldn’t that make you step backwards?
No, instead, clearing her mind prepared Marie and her husband to make the groundbreaking discovery of two radioactive elements.
The Curies weren’t the only ones. Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Georgia O’Keefe, and multitudes of other luminaries took long walks, laid under apple trees, and played music.
“This approach is not only more sustainable and humane, it’s also arguably the better long-term strategy for producing results that matter. In the sixteenth century, Galileo’s professional life was more leisurely and less intense than that of the average twenty-first century knowledge worker. Yet he still managed to change the course of human history.”
Cal Newport, Slow Productivity, p. 116
So here are some practical suggestions to do less stuff.
Use time blocks
Build time into your calendar to mono-task. This is time-blocking. You schedule out your week into blocks of time where you are free to focus and do deep work. On my time blocking calendar I use two Google calendars and overlay the time blocking under my schedule. I’ve reserved a time for emails, a time for phone calls, a day for filming, and a day to catch up on the details I may have missed during the week.
With your time blocks, declare certain hours protected, e.g. no calls before noon, or all calls must be scheduled into my “office hour” blocks”.
You can also reduce the number of appointments on your calendar. Cal uses a system that he calls “One for me one for you”. Every time someone schedules a call or a meeting with him, he schedules one hour of deep work into his calendar. Then if his week fills up, he still guarantees that he gets the time he needs to settle down and focus on his creative projects.
Reduce your task list
Cal Newport says to reduce your task list by 25-50%. This is coming from the guy who has written a gazillion bestselling books, while also teaching, and hosting a podcast. But he takes time off regularly.
The way that Cal does this is by committing to only two or three active projects, and delegating, deleting, or putting on hold any tasks that aren’t related to those projects.
You might be thinking, that’s impossible at work. But I’d argue, that’s probably your fears and anxiety speaking, because being burnt out isn’t making you more productive. It’s anxiety, not reality, that keeps you feeling like you’ve always got to be busy. And anxiety is fueled by lack of clarity. Am I actually in danger of being fired? Of failure? Not sure? Let’s stay busy just in case.
Being overwhelmed, having a lack of clarity about which tasks to work on, or simultaneously working on multiple tasks triggers the stress response in the nervous system. It’s that nervous system load that causes burnout, not the actual tasks. Every project or task comes with an overhead tax of remembering all the details, plus emails, meetings, and other administrative tasks. And those overhead tasks will suck your energy.
Build rest and recovery into your daily schedule
Instead of filling up your calendar and your workload to your absolute capacity, create some margins in your life.
In her book, Burnout, Emily Nagoski, says we need 42% of our day to be in rest-and-recovery mode. So when you’re time blocking the heck out of your calendar, on top of your 8 hours of sleep, be sure to give yourself about 2 hours of exercise, connection with a friend or loved one, mindful eating without a screen, play, daydreaming, or anything that recharges you. Rest is a biological requirement, and if you don’t take it, Emily says “the 42 percent will take you” through burnout or physical illness.
If you struggle to de-stress, you could check out a free course I made called Grounding Skills for Anxiety. In 15 short lessons you’ll learn to let go of stress and soothe anxiety in the body.
Double your timelines on some projects
Are you guilty of shortening your time blocks so you can fit more of them on your calendar? That’s just going to build your stress and anxiety when you can’t keep up with it all. Now, this might freak you out, but Cal recommends doubling your timelines on some projects. Humans are terrible at estimating how long cognitive tasks take. So whatever time you initially plan for a project, double it. Doing so will let you work at a natural pace, rather than frantically rushing through your projects.
Intentionally pull projects into your workflow
Instead of having a constantly overflowing to-do list that pushes you toward stress and burnout, choose to pull in a few creative ideas at a time. This allows for more thoughtful, high-quality work—instead of pseudo-productive work that looks busy but isn’t impactful.
In the book, Newport references Toyota’s famous push vs. pull system to demonstrate a smarter approach to managing workflow. When stuff gets pushed onto your to-do list, it fills up your mental and physical workspace. But Toyota’s pull system is based on actual demand. Instead of producing goods and pushing them down the line, at each stage of a project, you pull what you need. Dealerships pull cars when they’ve sold cars. As those cars sell, shipping moves more cars. Auto workers pull the task they need to work on, instead of letting the needs pile up in their space.
On a practical level, here’s how I do it. I use a backlog list for all the things that I want to do, and a weekly “sprint” list for all the things that I’m actively working on. When I’ve completed something in the sprint, I go to the backlog list and pull in a new project. This keeps me from seeing a huge pile of to-do’s and getting overwhelmed. This is the key strategy. Cal says if you can implement it, you’ll decrease your mental load by half.
But what if your boss keeps piling stuff onto you? There’s a few powerful ways to slow them down.
- Ask for more details. He needs to do the legwork to let you know the scope and requirements of the project. Sometimes asking for details this is enough for him to respond with, “I don’t have time for that, let’s put a pin in it.”
- Explain your priorities. Let her know that for you to put this into your top three priorities, you’ll need to de-prioritize a different task: “Sure boss, I can work on the marketing copy. But I am currently working on X number of projects, so which of these projects would you like me to move back into the holding tank?” And give an estimate for how long the project will take.
Either decline the project or cancel other stuff to make room. As Newport says, you’re dealing with the reality of your time, not your gut feeling of how busy you’re feeling at the moment.
You’ll learn to develop a better ability to estimate how many commitments you can take at a time without overfilling your schedule.
OK, so that was our first big strategy to reduce burnout while also being more productive: do less things. Now let’s talk about the second one.
Slow Productivity Strategy #2: Embrace Seasonality
Remember those hunter gatherers and farmers? They worked seasonally. Despite the invention of factories, we humans aren’t optimally productive when working non stop. Our minds and bodies are pretty good at managing short-term stressors, but pretty bad at handling chronic stress. So, to build up a healthier, more sustainable way to work, Newport recommends that we make space for slow times in work, and give ourselves permission to work less. Sometimes this lengthens out timelines, but it gives you room for deep focus and higher-quality work.
Plan some slow seasons for your work. If you run your own business, if you’re a marketing person, maybe your slow season is January through March after all the sales season is over. If you’re an accountant, it’s after April 15th. If you feel like this is impossible, that’s probably your anxiety speaking. Ask yourself, “Is burning myself out making me more productive?”
For example, Cal Newport tells about a software company named Basecamp. They use a rhythm of six weeks of focused work followed by two weeks of downtime. The six-week cycle allows for deep focus on meaningful projects, while the two weeks of rest or lighter tasks help employees recharge before the next push. This company chooses sanity over burnout.
It’s true that many of us have bosses or clients making demands, but it is possible to quietly create seasonality in your work. Instead of immediately accepting new projects, you might say, “Let’s pick that up next year,” or, “I’m currently busy, but I’m available for a new project in three weeks.”
If you can’t get away with longer slow periods, find short ways to implement small seasonality, i.e. “No meeting Mondays” or “I answer emails at 8am and 4pm.”
Now let’s be honest for a moment, if you are constantly lying to your boss, it’s not going to benefit you, your mission, your burnout or sustainability, or the company in any way. It may be helpful to have a conversation with your boss about the value of seasons in your work. When you both affirm that you want to make high-quality work within a system that supports your productivity and sanity, it’s easier to say “not yet” to new projects and to be intentional about when to start them.
If we can move away from the mental block that says “being busy is how I’m productive”, this can change our work culture and free us up for some creativity.
For me, one of the biggest sources of friction was trying to work—which I love—and spending time with my kids—whom I love. I had already set clear boundaries for myself on how many hours per week I would work, but fear was keeping me tied to publishing one YouTube video a week, which forced me to work through holidays and summers. Summer was the hardest, trying to manage the kids while also trying to work made me bad at both. So, with permission from Cal, I started working seasonally. When they’re in school I’m going to work fast and focused, and when they’re off for breaks, I’m not going to work.
Last year, instead of dragging myself through the summer, I played with my kids, hiked, and used my free time for other creative pursuits. And by the time the kids were back in school, I had a flood of good ideas for videos. I’m not so burnt out, and I’m being more productive. And I got to spend time with my kids and hiking. Win win win!
Here’s Cal Newport’s third point:
Slow Productivity Strategy #3: Obsess Over Quality
When we look carefully at what we’re making, whether it’s widgets or youtube videos, building a higher quality product, something that you can be proud of, is worth more than making ten low quality products. Frantic work is low quality. Take the time to do your research and develop good taste. Simplify your offerings. Get really clear on what you do and don’t do. For me this means I’m not making videos about addiction recovery, for a plumber- maybe she’s only going to do sinks, or for a marketing consultant, maybe they only do mailers.
Do less stuff, but make it higher quality.
This often produces better financial outcomes as well. Newport tells the story of a graphic designer who decided to take on 50% less work (strategy 1) and charged slightly higher for that work. Now she works less hours, puts out a better product, can change more, and she has more freedom in her schedule to travel. She’s actually working 50% less hours, but making about 90% as much money as she did before.
Summary of Cal Newport’s 3 Strategies
OK, so there you have it. You might be burnt out because you’re anxious and unclear about what is and isn’t on your plate. Get clarity about that. Do less stuff. Work seasonally. And obsess over quality.
Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity book really helped me reframe how I thought about knowledge work and burnout. I hope that it’s helpful for you too.
